LO KWA MEI-EN

GREEN CARD

I guess it’s too late to live on the farm, to move + farm
love + escape the notice of a certain people who believe

I do not belong on the farm + I did not move here
to lift up the imagination to hose down the peahen trough

with, but to escape uncertain people who notice belief
+ it’s too late to make a run for a farm, to farm the now

for peace or to imagine holding out rough hands + life
rising like an orchid’s fat wag from greening farm sticks

when it’s too late to run for student farm council now that
all the extracurriculars like successful poems are framed

+ traded for a thick, green plot of orchestra rights + that
is unattractive—I guess it’s too late to be basically healthy

in the academy, my drinking disease won in the academy
+ I fear the outdoors + the academy + what if sonnets

are unattractive because masochism is unattractive, well
I guess if one must be (a masochist) it’s best to be attractive—

what of an academy of the outdoors though, what poets in
the bloomy tundras the feminist sinkholes the outhouses

(if one must be attractive, is it best to be a masochist or),
not me, I’m out dead with my eating disease + know it’s

never too late to unblossom in rage + sink away as I pass
the spoken english exam required by this new academy

when on the farm sick for a blanket of whiteness (“snow”)
when the $ for universality is a sonnet crown of white corn

exam where I guess it’s too late to use the words required
to belong in America + if it’s too late to apply to the farm

+ the rent for empathy is a poet breaking a chain of food
it’s too late to live on the farm + it’s too now to move