by Stephen Nelson
fable at the boundary of the dream
the way sleep begins as speculation, marmoreal
& lush. the mind loosening its ropes on the body
to consider the crosshatch of rain before
lacquering the composition into sky.
last night, I found myself similarly uninhabited:
a fault line sundered into a sheet of bone.
fog
blinked its slow eye, silked thick with ossein
& it could not be said that I was alive at all, only
an idea—the conception of stags
but not their running, not their blood.
maybe I was no longer human. a body rippling
through the meridian of two different forests can
only be understood as a series
of temporal invasions. the lone human quality
remaining: that I might be taken
somewhere against my control. still, how
was I so certain
that I could open my eyes and return?
how am I certain now
that the light flashing through each blue window
is a softness of this world?
the way waking is a speculation, marmoreal
& lush. between sleep & the dream
the body must fold with heavenly desperation
like two hands in prayer,
murmuring itself into being.
Emily Liu is a poet from the Chicago area. Their work has been recognized by the International Hippocrates Young Poets Prize, Pfeiffer University, Poetry Society, and Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, among others. Their poetry most recently appears in The Phoenix, Sooth Swarm Journal, eunoia review, and DePaul’s Blue Book: Best of Illinois High School Writing 2018-2019 Anthology. They are currently a student at Neuqua Valley.
Stephen Nelson is a Scottish writer and visual poet who works in a variety of forms including concrete poetry, asemic writing, fiction and prose poetry. He has exhibited in several countries including Italy, Germany, Argentina, Brazil and at the 2011 Text Festival in Bury, England. His textual poetry has appeared in journals internationally, including Posit, Eratio and Anthropocene Journal, and in three full collections. A poem from his book, Lunar Poems for New Religions, was published in The Sunday Times Poet’s Corner. He speaks eight language, practises meditation, and enjoys living by a burn in a town in central Scotland.