Lydia Kang Takes The Dare

Okay, so way back when, April asked me to do a truth or dare, and I picked a dare. This one, to be exact:

Go to a cemetery at dusk and write a poem.

I put it off for months! But the time came, and lo and behold, it was Friday the 13^th last week, so it was meant to be. I drove to the Bohemian Cemetery in town, prayed I wouldn’t get arrested or maimed by the dead, and did the deed. Actually, I did the deed several times, as you can see. I also have pictures to prove that I went.  See? (in one of them, I found a 4-leaf clover looking thing. I think the spirit of the Lucky13s was with me. J)

Here are my poems. Yes, I wrote a bunch. The dead, the robins, and the mosquitoes kept me company.

Cemetery at Dusk

In the quiet of the cemetery,

I heard the mourners.

The ones who wept a lake,

and the unmoving, those who screamed inside themselves

for Anna

for Charles

for Vaclav and Mary.

I heard others who laughed with shameful spite

happy to be parted with the freshly dead.

And those who cried because,

dearest,

they’d wished they’d had more time.

Antonia’s grave

Antonia said she disliked lace.

It makes me sad, she said.

Bury me in clematis vine

in lapis and gold leaf

with a water veil

and the perfume of an angry woman.

And so he did.

A Question of Death

Will you say goodbye

to the firefly and the cicadas,

the angry words and the scent of violence?

To salt and caramel and regret,

To love so keen it bores like a parasite?

I ask you this, knowing there is no answer,

knowing there is no choice.

Lydia Kang is an author. A part-time doc. A salt-lover. A geek-girl. A hyphen addict. She is represented by Eric Myers of the Spieler Agency, and her YA sci-fi novel, CONTROL, will be out with Dial/Penguin in the summer of 2013. Find her awesome blog here.

Next up: Natalie, this Friday. Send her truth and dares.