/ Poetry /
“I needed unerased paper,
transparent faith.
That’s how that day went for me.”
- Shin Hae Uk, trans. Spencer Lee-Lenfield
looking out at an overcast sky, window
staid like a polaroid frame, i prayed, let it be
lightning, the flash that scatters, the prickling
anxiety of humid skin, the first flush of a
noon-day drizzle. let it be lightning that jolts
apolitical flesh, that ravishes frosted eyes, that
pares back every atomised afternoon: we
like grains of sand, we like shards of glass,
our dolorous selves dissolving into fog. oh
to be split open like rocks into pools, like
flint into trickles that gush, ten-thousand-
gallon flows that spread and roll on
flatlands, that twist and turn on mountain
borders and settle in silent springs. spates.
outbursts. water abating. deep wrestled
to deep. body folded into the peace of an
agony that comes to recede day after day
after day.