Poetry: "Truth is"

By Esther Lee

        Kevin Lee is a fine peacock,
hair out-shimmering black molasses, jawline
a crisp faultlined edge.
                       Like sand-filled duck, meatless
& slightly fluffed, is his new American
moniker—Kevin—transliterated
from his too short, too Oriental Keun.
Women coo for him in suit of red foil
& wing tips of matching burns.
                                    Their tongues, wild
raspberries against his chest, spell out, letter
by letter, the name moaned for hours; the one
he lifts from page thirty-six in Cute Names
for Your New Baby, the name his mother won’t
pronounce the middle letters of; the one
he finds in the Ks, between Ken & Kimberly.