TALES OF THE TANGRAM
Seven. It started with seven coal black pieces of sky.
Shadow shapes wanting life.
The scorpion turned first, red stinger triangulating,
waving high, frightened by the other six.
He asks why is this puzzle called hawk sliding through the clouds.
And although the fox’s red tongue laps behind him, they do not touch.
Now, the crocodile flips, his yellow belly facing the sun.
He is angry, he is floating into a swan and he does not want to.
Wings she can see can be arms too and a man runs – finds he has arms and a hat.
They cannot overlap. He cannot fly, but watches his tan legs turn to a boat’s prow.
Still seas bring the shark and so the ship tumbles.
Bewitched, confused as it eats, the shark grows smaller, now, an angelfish darting,
Then, at the wave’s crest, a gray dolphin flies into the air to be the open bill
of a seagull. But the earth calls again. Tilt a little. A woman reclines as a star
emerges from her mouth. The star rotates slowly, it loses itself into
the glint of a tiger’s eyes. He is hungry, but there is no solution.
The answer is simple: he must be the rooster daring the sun.
But that is not enough for the iris or his eyes.
This is why the dragonfly rises into a dragon.
They are all so cunning, these seven.
Everything can be shaped.
Glint Literary Journal 