Three Poems by David Lee

Cartography of What Refuses to Stay

At the field’s edge
a deer stands as though already gone.

Grass tilts without wind:
a rumor of pressure,
a sentence cut before its subject arrives.

I write: something here resists naming.
I write: the sky is an unverified claim.

A child calls across the distance;
the sound arrives late,
detached from its speaker.

Even the horizon
recedes the moment it’s observed,
as if attention itself
were an act of trespass.

The Weather That Arrived as a Diagnosis

They spoke it like rain:
inevitable, impersonal, already falling
before the chart was opened.

You begin to recognize
how the body forecasts its own weather:
pressure behind the eyes,
a low storm gathering beneath the ribs.

Forecasts arrive in numbers,
as if the future could be reduced
without losing its violence.

I asked what follows.
They said: management -
as though living
were something that could be maintained
rather than endured.

Still, the sky keeps breaking
without asking permission.

Manual for Vanishing Without Leaving a Trace

First, unname yourself:
let the given name dissolve
or misplace itself in water.

Then walk slowly
through the places that once recognized you
until recognition begins to fail.

Speak in fragments:
enough to imply presence,
never enough to confirm it.

If called, do not answer immediately.
Let the silence stretch
until it gains weight.

Understand this:
disappearance is not absence
but a rearrangement
of how the world perceives you.

The world will adapt.
It always does.



David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores the intersections of medicine, identity, and philosophical inquiry. His poetry has appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, The Scarred Tree, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. He holds degrees in philosophy and medical science and lives in Texas. His work often engages themes of perception, embodiment, and the ethical dimensions of modern life.