Maw Shein Win

Bio: Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 - 2018), and her new full-length poetry collection, Storage Unit for the Spirit House (Omnidawn, 2020), is longlisted for the 2021 PEN America Open Book Award. mawsheinwin.com

Winter Hair

I hear the songbirds more these days.
Try to decipher sirens & calls.

T makes a cocktail for us called Black Lily.
I grow out my white roots, winter hair.

Our calico wails at 3am.
My mother’s losing her hearing.

Figs fall from nearby trees.
Wild bobcat roams yards of shuttered homes.
I read somewhere that blue jays molt.
Unkempt they fly away.

Wetlands

Otter & mink roam the fen.
 I don a vest of moss.
Cormorants & curlew sound from the bog.
 I avoid the beehive.
Sea trout & croaker move through saltwater swamp.
 I consult my mood ring: how will I feel?
Sedges & saltbush, the bobcats are disappearing. I cry at all the right times.

Snake

Pain coiled below the scalp.
Spine curled in ball on calfskin sofa.
Hydrocodone & THC bath salts from town.

Snake ascends from curving spine.
Grass gathers along forearms.
Foam brace holds neck up straight.

Snake in a patch near the crown.
Curving road ahead veers in the dark.
Musculoskeletal x-rays flash in brain.

Rip of pain zips from hip.
Ginger & turmeric roots grow under hair.
Rhizome shoots appear on shoulder blades.

Forage

The foragers salvage lemon rinds & fallen walnuts. Someone finds a leather saddle on a lawn in El Cerrito.
Framed poster of Hans Bellmer’s grotesque dolls. The elements unravel & reveal.

Wild monkeys dash through downtown Bangkok.
Children scroll through Chromebooks.

The mansion dwellers on the hill cannot
stop baking: pound cake, beer bread, cinnamon buns.

An antidote for the living

Mud jug, poison stream, thorn tea
Hold up her tiny head with my hands
Anxiety spills, bellflower, suspended bread
 That time I got so high I, I
Blurred pilgrims, rigged systems, pleasant distractions
 Toss across the hall, me
Immersive theater, verdigris promenade
 Diagnose visitations, my drawn-in brows
Three bones in the woods, gold ferns

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