qarrtsiluni

Also a rotation results when you turn,
replacement for what you were.
The sun, dealing with its satellites,
showers them with light and heat
and flares of blinding energy. We can
only observe an eclipse
through a pinhole, although once
I accidentally looked out and saw
the sun behind the moon. The memory
has stayed a blank on my retina for years.
As does my memory of who you were,
once, before the necessary
unfastening of body from self.

*

Energetically intent as through a pinhole

a sphere away. Yet,   yes : to bindingly
affix like that at some precise intersection:

arm of the body making “circle” and the self
snowed in wordlessness can’t separate

(even once) tying, trying to tap lightly
on the exposed back wall of memory
and (two) look for a change in the quality
of light say, it was a bell and rang (accidental)
or no, a curvature of devotion came between:

*

The sweep of an arm, things brushed off
into the sphere of the lost. I’d want
to replace the bell, which broke when it fell.
I’d want to memorize the loop
of some bird’s flight, circumnavigate
the mind’s eye, watching. The shape
of a perfect hollow ring, sound that widens
out into space slowly, trailing far
behind the comet’s tail of light.

*

Not to what began the joy ride but bulleted

a taillight when you saw my last comma
stricken from the triptych that’s what I’ll be compared to
on the downshift from the City of Rocks if I fail
to hear the broken ring traceable to the dashed bell
and the loopy birds that rumble before they smooth themselves
and settle in stone enclaves replacements for the whistle

*

or the voice—   reeding by riverbend—
which I don’t keep because it melts in the mouth of its spell
what phase is sound in now? period
exists only in time and disintegrates in the   interval
where the body   vanishes

by K. Alma Peterson and Kathleen Jesme

Download the MP3 (reading by K. Alma Peterson)

For process notes, see “Giver of Givens.”