Rome founded on a series of proofs—this hill, this teat.

A presence at a border draws
the arm of the light

: Test //

+++++++++++a border presence            ex. cheekbone at the window

+++++++[shaft of sun]
+++++++six or twelve birds above the Palatine

//

The wolf at the door suckles

the twins until one
discerns his mandate:

to become someone other than yourself

//

+++++++[in the movie] girl descends

+++++++++++an internal staircase
+++++++++++makes the courtyard, and looks back:

Do what you could never do.

---

 

Mia Kang is an Oregon-born, Texas-raised writer, named the 2017 winner of Boston Review’s Annual Poetry Contest by Mónica de la Torre. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Rattle Poets Respond, Narrative Magazine, Sugar House Review, and the PEN Poetry Series. A Brooklyn Poets Fellow and runner-up for the 2017 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest, she is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets’ 2016 Catalina Páez and Seumas MacManus Award, among others. Mia is a PhD student in the history of art at Yale University, where she studies contemporary art, constitutive outsides, and impasse.