Andy Sia
DOMATOPHILIA
ROOM
A room is enclosed space.
A room is enclosed.
A room is space.
A room is close.
A close is room.
A space is room.
A room is space enclosed.
A room is enclosed to whom?
A room is close to whom?
A room is whom?
A room is a room.
ROOM
When I walk into a room
I am taken, first,
By its dimensions:
How big is it?
Does it contort?
What of its faces
That come out?
When I walk into a room,
The room walks into me
Banishing all pretense:
A door opens.
ROOM
For the zither player
Echolocation
Is paramount.
He plucks and trucks
Until his fingers
Stiffen like leaves
Taken by hoar.
I am thinking of
Kissing his hands.
I am thinking. His
Hands. Memory.
Smoke out
His hands.
ROOM
To make beautiful
I buy a vase.
I buy a lamp.
I buy a rug.
In the centerfold
I lay the rug, itself
Circular, yellow
Like yolkish
Centerpiece
Of the hen’s
Organic vessel.
Itself circular
Unlike the square
Dimensions
Of room—
Antipodal to hard
Edges, itself anti-
Dotal, circular
As logic warping
Into itself.
It softens,
It is true.
Circle wraps
Around,
Square enacts.
Sun gathers
Together the animals.
River sips water
To quench its thirst.
Once the world occurred.
Outside of myself,
It is so beautiful.
ROOM
Is room bloom?
Is room doom?
Is room loom?
Is room gloom?
Is room groom?
Is room womb?
Is room room?
ROOM
My friends, for us
I want beautiful
Spaces. I want beautiful
Spaces for us all.
In my rented room
Which is also my house,
We talk of our dream house,
Another way of saying home.
Strange to live an existence
One hospital trip away
From financial devastation.
I don’t know how to exist
In this country.
ROOM
I am afraid.
I shut myself
In the house
For a period
Of a few months.
The outside:
It wobbles
Like the meat
Of honeycomb.
I am afraid,
I am afraid.
I rock myself
Surrounded
By objects.
What then,
When I lose
This feeling,
What then.
ROOM
A conch was once
A house. A conch
Once was inhabited
By something
Besides sound,
Something sound.
Put your ear,
Itself a conch,
Against a conch,
Itself an ear.
Enter the spiral
As the hermit, robes
Trailing. Nothing
Lasts like
Everything.
ROOM
As youngest-born
I have the privilege
Of scuttling through
Pre-made rooms:
My family, your gesture
Is not lost on me
In the Room of Draperies;
And in the Room of Brambles,
I interact with the shadows;
In the Room of Chimes,
I become the quietest spell.
ROOM
The actor surrounds
Himself with mirrors.
Do not disturb.
Like the moth,
He is hard at work.
He paints his face
Such that he may see.
He who has
An audience of none
Has an audience of one.
ROOM
Siblings—
Do you remember
The rooms that
Preceded the room?
I am peering from
The shadows when
Voices, many and all
At once gush
Like water down a
Canal, it is then
I realize these
Are your voices,
Your calls,
I am terrified,
I am not,
I show my hand,
So alive,
So terrified,
My siblings:
Where are you?
Where?
ANDY SIA is from Brunei and resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. His poems appear in Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and West Branch. He has received support from Bread Loaf and is a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati.
