See our feature on Daughter's Latitude _______ Karen Swenson's poetry collections: A Daughter's Latitude: New and Selected Poems The Landlady in Bangkok (National Poetry Series)

Karen Swenson Rage in Malaysia The rooms of my rage are empty of actors, parents in coffins sleep — kittens in drawers — yet harsh voices scold in yesterday's dust drag unfinished quarrels through present chambers. On earth's other side from my western childhood tide mutters among bones and brains of corals whose tenements vacant, but for the sea, have only that one voice to haunt their bare cells. I wish that this salt, so far from my birth, could rinse from the empty chambers of childhood the querulous voice to leave only white bones in the murmuring lace of surf. Dead Cat On your journey from alley to trust you scabbed my hands with your fear, lived crouched under the sofa, ate tuna but raided the garbage for chicken bones because what is enough? Car sick ten times cross country, almost lost in Yellowstone still you learned to leap on laps, to curl into the crook of my knees. Laying you limp, but still warm, into the spring damp of earth, I am a good gardener, tamping dirt down over your death to grow.