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Kristine Ong Muslim's work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than three hundred publications worldwide, including A River & Sound Review, Beeswax Magazine, Boxcar Poetry Review, Fifth Wednesday, GlassFire Magazine, Grasslimb, Iodine Poetry Journal, Narrative Magazine, New Madrid, Other Poetry, Otoliths, Ottawa Arts Review, Pank, Quay, Riddle Fence, The Pedestal Magazine, and T-Zero. She was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and twice for the Rhysling Award.
Kristine Ong Muslim
Armed with an instruction manual,
I demolish a house. The owners have left, have hitchhiked their way to the wasteland.
The floor I compress into a cathedral.
Inside a child's bedroom, the plastic action figures on the second shelf wobble; in the
study, the charcoal sketch of a dream lover swelters—the faith I see on the portrait's eyes
is just a stray sliver of light.
Unrolling the house, I discover the dust under the rug. They come in all colors—those
miniature chimeras of happiness—with spools of hunger in between.
I scoop the hunger, and I swallow.
I hear the roaring out of the rubble
of the dying house.