conjuring
there is no room left for disbelief, we have unsang
the songs. have stripped stones of magic. we gave
the gods power and took it back. our miracles lay
wrecked in roman columns, in the fragmented shapes
between starlight, their collapsible figures. enough proof
of faith. enough convalescence and abstract scripture,
evocations of hymn, oil-weight of paintings and their
surrendering strokes, the paths by which impossibilities
came seeking resemblance, enough ochre-rimmed
desert mirages. animal we named and battered in battles
of ordinary victory. fables retold to nothing. history
unguarded against the endless survey of capitals. we've
earned a long sleep. dreamed of its possible contours
when nearing the threshold, comfort we caught in craps,
we've given the day everything. the seige white and brave
as horizon. any morning in which we stood alongside
the words, it has passed. attempts at reading murmuration,
other inhuman languages, gave the inexplicable its own
holiness. distance and its hypnosis, gold and its melting
temperature, incantations waning with anise, cinnamon
smell. milk-potions and apple-carvings and oracles—
we've eaten our fill. all this to ward off the oncoming.
all of it to ward off what was already with us, the world
a question desperately seeking its own annihilation.
look around, my love. all these wild answers we've
made, and not one among them have stayed with us
through the impossible pacings of a single, waking night.
Copyright Credit: Xiao Yue Shan, "conjuring" from The Telling Be the Antidote. Copyright © 2023 by Xiao Yue Shan. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.
Source: The Telling Be the Antidote (Tupelo Press, 2023)