More than Parallel
Three poems on memory, mourning, and the sacred spaces where grief takes shape
you’d imagine lines as silhouette
then a heart in broken shadow
hardly breathing
maybe there’s a rhythm to the equator spinning though never moving so much depends on not knowing what happens has happened again the world dies on time and stays there for the heroes and the ghosts learn to speak in measured doubt draw the motion of someone’s eyes as they leave inspiration to rest i sometimes reach past myself rise and fall to the touch of her memory fight with spirits within my head place offerings of belief like pearls spend hours to retrace the tears i listen to the hopes of icons falling to a bronze creator in alabaster until all that’s mine becomes hers
rubi’s vigil
some return from a horizon of long ago holding hands that are muted sacrificed to embered statues as fire wants to be at first contained by the blackness of an urn when the frost circles its depth and you can’t stand it any longer as you were right then and the winds too cold to leave ripples cloud a place you can’t recall branches shudder from such drowning who’s going to light candles which god looks to that vintage daguerreotype the silver that disrupts the mekong’s gold an unlikely sunset thrives to be here long enough to hold the head so close a setting that won’t let you go something of a woman’s sandalwood gown burnt to hover in vapors of smoke lining the currents of a summer wind spills from the weeping humidity so much the gods stand frozen unable to reply to our chants their own prayers misheard in the silence
silk
such heavy gold must have dripped from the sky in waves you’d see from the sun but don’t stay too long don’t look here at the feet hand-forged tile geometry inscribed meaning a visitor’s edifice taking turns the next one taught to learn incense handed over right to the left hand though some can’t read the scripted gods pure white banners sashes that surround all around columns that heighten the eaves of the roof of tiled green moss how weathered they are seen from the inside out unlike the gods they shelter iron circles these columns holding intact the only grey relief worth seeing just ask the monks who learned prayers and fed ore to the ochre furnace here alone you can see the red tongue depicted as such and screeching a stone foot that grinds a flowered serpent to the ground but may recover next spring as evil recoils for the next visitor to begin their memory
Kenneth Kesner (肯内思) splits his time between the Caucasus and South East Asia. Some recent works are featured in: the engine(idling, Glint Literary Journal, Midsummer Dream House, Pictura Journal, and Plato’s Caves.