Paper Person
I trace paper’s origins
to ancient China, where a eunuch
in the Imperial Household collects
wasps. He watches them bounce
against oiled panes of linen, chew
mulberry wood into a pulp and spread
it into thin walls, spit casings for a whole
ochre nest of them to spin their sleep.
How did he first think to copy
them? And what of the hot welts
on the tips of his fingers, a whole
bracelet of them around his wrist?
Did they interfere with his calligraphy,
each inky curl glowing black on flat silk
swerved fatter than usual? Crispy bodies
collect near his candle, a light pile of wing
and mandible rolled into striped
commas, and still, he writes.
I wonder about the space
between his legs, the void of tailed cells,
his skin there so alive with stringy nerve
but hardly touched. No chance for it to grow
resistant to a brush of the tiniest hand,
the coolness of a jade ring. His skin
there thin as the very paper
he first dried and cut clean.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of At the Drive-In Volcano, winner of the Balcones Prize, and Miracle Fruit, which won Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine. Other awards include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Pushcart Prize. She is associate professor of English at SUNY-Fredonia.
