from north of the earth
4 Minutes Read Time
on the bluff of the body shut off ears eyes nostrils and
throats and feel
on the bluff of the body open the churning heart and let
syllables run wild run free
in the body that carried in the body about to blurt word
words and worlds fell in the pupil of sisterly poetry
the far mountain gathering all the blues blue and black
pierced the white of the eye
after failed word another word after an eye another eye
covering
covering in the shade of night trees
night covered night and no longer called for night
wiping off his face he refused his job assignment at a
government law office up to the podium the child strutted
his arms and chewed and choked on a flood of characters
that became his friends
were the loud days returned
in which shoes would he find himself in the days to come
on the podium he was passing on maoist thoughts on the
podium all the students were watching him heads between
heads all the pupils fixated on the ever-blinking of his
eyelids he was losing sight as if only a mouthpiece as if the
child of him were rushing into his head again
the cracked memory ground wet again he longed for the
spring flood for the sea dragon to rise in the north where he
sought a name for the family
his room in the suburb clean and bright as if his burning
nights of writing were shaved and wiped off when the sun
rose for a new day
was the day ever new again
his mind turned south
grandfather died here father died here he would not die
here the earth the only place that buried the ancient bronze
that would not burn him to ashes drifting to the forever-
trodden earth where his long-gone sisters ate their black-
waving hair as if they were eating sizzling-hot noodles on
the birth of their years
was night the book of cold was cold the feel of hands
longing long as hair waving then churned in the stomach
bitter bitter water but water was it almost spring
he wrote in the book of night was night the book to be
written to be written over
n-ight was l-ight
to the south where he would not die
to the south where van gogh shaved light and dropped his
ears in sunflower heads
to the south where people his age dropped their hoes in the
flooded fields and to the mountains where holes were dug
for the precious bronze the young generation of peasants
turned into bronze diggers they would not die close to the
fields where their grandparents and parents planted rice
seeds and their shoes left hanging on a tree branch near the
paddies and now forever out of reach
the quarry glittered ghost light
in the blazing summer light strips of bronze traced their
steps in the sawdust in the cracked mountain quarry dirt
littered and glittering then rust blotted their faces and the
days darkened their thrash shoes worn on the new cement
village roads to a prosperity that they saw in the black-and-
white flashing box at the new grocery store at the entrance
of the village main road all the eyes drawn to ironed white
shirts city people wore on a normal day and their minds
horsed into dream again into light again as if the sun
dropped into their pupils
he was left alone in the dark room he was no longer one
of them now a junior professor he was left to suck in his
world in the black characters that the grandparents and the
parents could not read
so strange to be in a silent world where the mind pressed on
then faltered the mindscape so spacious and cold he buried
himself under quilt after quilt until the under-sheet soured
to the last thread
n and l still indistinguishable so were n-ights and l-ights
Read more from Issue 23.1.
