Nancy Lynée Woo
Nancy Lynée Woo spends her free time hitching a ride to the other side of maybe. She is an MFA candidate at Antioch University, the recipient of fellowships from PEN America, Arts Council for Long Beach, and Idyllwild Writers Week, and the author of two chapbooks. Find her cavorting around Long Beach, California, and online at nancylyneewoo.com.
©2021 West Trade Review
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Naysaying the Noise
I haven’t found one thing the stars
aren’t a cure for. Hand me my mountain
bag, full of ripe plums plummeting
from flower bud to boiling pot to jam jar.
I count the miles back out to chaparral,
heaving under the weight of my need
to see everything, and to be seen seeing it.
Would I feel less wanderlust if I could
scrub off the dead glory of a nation
obsessed with itself? Follow me
to a hot spring tucked away
behind some tall grass—
would you like that? I accelerate
out to the wilderness, forgetting
what I’m supposed to be forgetting.
To get absolutely lost in the ridiculous
brilliance of an acorn—I have everything
I could ever want. And still I wonder
how far the human race will go for a profit,
whether we will ever find another home
like this one, its miraculous blue, its hilarious
oxygen. Every cat meme is a metaphor
for the existential threat du jour. Somewhere,
a teenage girl thinks her ears are too big.
All we have is our experience. Just ask
the Joshua trees, prophets of beauty, survival.
And the hawking jays, what I wouldn’t even call
song. I want to give them to you,
their pointy heads and blue breasts flashing.
Everyone deserves to follow the sky.
What illusion am I breaking when I say no
to the noise? I won’t entertain hatred, refuse
to listen to a man on the news spitting
globs of fear in a language no oriole,
no quail, no midnight bat, no creosote bush,
no dire wolf, no waxing moon understands.
