[like sky lit moon]
like sky lit moon, if it didn’t feel so good we wouldn’t eat so much of it:
the sugar, the sex. we wouldn’t have
built that storefront for condoms & cashews & hands & legs & lassos
waiting on a credible news source to confirm reports of the recent extinction
of the unicorn race. a week ago it was reported
the last cowboy died out too. you said you were shocked & entirely skeptical at the same time.
as long as there exists the places we are waiting on
& the places we will not go,
i am sure unicorns & cowboys are much alive in the fabric of our DNA. i whisper into your palm,
the same palm that reaches & reaches & reaches outward.
you took the news like one takes
a secret. you thought on it a while. you buried it in the backyard of your head.
you watered it, sung to it before bed & like all things it grew.
just because we can’t see cowboys & unicorns
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pray
to them, you said, quiet, as to not break the still black morning’s sloth.
just because we can’t pray to them, doesn’t mean there lacks room for us to imagine hooves
against the wooden slats of a saloon, a person riding bare back
with one-handed confidence leading us
from temptation to temptation
& delivering us to a rotunda of night sky, you said.
you wrote a prayer on a notepad:
unicorn, tell us how all was placed on earth.
you burnt it in a candle. you watched its ashes be carried off to somewhere else. everywhere we exist
is a building waiting for us to
step out of, & because we grow weary of listening for hooves at night,
in the morning, ivory glistens with dew
& because children stop dreaming in their beds & later outside of them too, we all must
face our inevitable extinctions. the new others will make tapestries of us then.
we will not be shown making shapes with arms & legs
nor eating pistachios in bed
but alive again, walking upright. the visitors will say how happy
they look, in the tapestry where we are
chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of eternal celestial bloom
where the flowers know to open for moon, not sun.
those coming to visit our tapestry will think we didn’t know the difference
between our serenity & freedom. I wonder how they tamed them,
the visitors will say. I wonder if they knew
they were the last of something? & right now as I think these things in bed,
on some porch in somewhere montana a house lamp dims
& the sky a broken yolk above it.
what are you thinking, you say. no, don’t tell me, you say, waiting for me to
pull you onto my side of the bed
& the moonlight will make its attempt to pierce
through the curtains while we both wait.
the sugar, the sex. we wouldn’t have
built that storefront for condoms & cashews & hands & legs & lassos
waiting on a credible news source to confirm reports of the recent extinction
of the unicorn race. a week ago it was reported
the last cowboy died out too. you said you were shocked & entirely skeptical at the same time.
as long as there exists the places we are waiting on
& the places we will not go,
i am sure unicorns & cowboys are much alive in the fabric of our DNA. i whisper into your palm,
the same palm that reaches & reaches & reaches outward.
you took the news like one takes
a secret. you thought on it a while. you buried it in the backyard of your head.
you watered it, sung to it before bed & like all things it grew.
just because we can’t see cowboys & unicorns
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pray
to them, you said, quiet, as to not break the still black morning’s sloth.
just because we can’t pray to them, doesn’t mean there lacks room for us to imagine hooves
against the wooden slats of a saloon, a person riding bare back
with one-handed confidence leading us
from temptation to temptation
& delivering us to a rotunda of night sky, you said.
you wrote a prayer on a notepad:
unicorn, tell us how all was placed on earth.
you burnt it in a candle. you watched its ashes be carried off to somewhere else. everywhere we exist
is a building waiting for us to
step out of, & because we grow weary of listening for hooves at night,
in the morning, ivory glistens with dew
& because children stop dreaming in their beds & later outside of them too, we all must
face our inevitable extinctions. the new others will make tapestries of us then.
we will not be shown making shapes with arms & legs
nor eating pistachios in bed
but alive again, walking upright. the visitors will say how happy
they look, in the tapestry where we are
chained to a pomegranate tree surrounded by a fence, in a field of eternal celestial bloom
where the flowers know to open for moon, not sun.
those coming to visit our tapestry will think we didn’t know the difference
between our serenity & freedom. I wonder how they tamed them,
the visitors will say. I wonder if they knew
they were the last of something? & right now as I think these things in bed,
on some porch in somewhere montana a house lamp dims
& the sky a broken yolk above it.
what are you thinking, you say. no, don’t tell me, you say, waiting for me to
pull you onto my side of the bed
& the moonlight will make its attempt to pierce
through the curtains while we both wait.
|
Ze Gao. From Mirror. Photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
|
Keegan Lester is the winner of the 2016 Slope Editions Book Prize, selected by Mary Ruefle, for his collection this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was & it was all i had, so i drew it. He is an American poet splitting time between New York City and Morgantown, West Virginia. His work is published in or forthcoming from the Boston Review, The Atlas Review, Powder Keg, BOAAT Journal, The Journal, Phantom Books, Tinderbox, CutBank, and Sixth Finch, among others, and has been featured on NPR, The New School Writing Blog, and Coldfront Magazine. He is the co-founder and poetry editor for the journal Souvenir Lit. You can follow him on Twitter @keeganmlester, on Instagram @kml2157, or find out more at keeganlester.com.
Ze Gao was born in China in 1992. He is a photographer, painter, curator, national senior photographer, and makeup artist in China. He studied fine arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and obtained an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He was also admitted into the Professional Teaching Materials for Students of Photography in Higher Education Institutions in China. His works have been showcased in many exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Korea, Singapore, and China.