For Pos Moua

What is the name for an antelope
          who grazes inside a dream

then vanishes into the
                           nebula’s brush.

                    What is the face
for refurbishing grammar

              at each comma’s lip.
                  Whose identity never

remembers the shape of beige.
  What is the word

                         for how to conjure
           the sigh of a line hushed

    beneath the flap of a thousand
shifting plumes.

What is the body of a
             garden where a crescent

                    despairs, drifts beneath
  the melt of amber.

The season is always growing
out its hooves.

                            One cradlesong
            of your leaving is not larger

    than the forest of your arrival.
To make you a noun forever.

                 A loss of you
cannot be equal to the loss of you.

Copyright Credit: Mai Der Vang, “Monument” from Yellow Rain. Copyright © 2021 by Mai Der Vang. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press.