Kenji Liu

Issue No. 9  •  April 2013

 

 

                     The wind-swept trees, you said, we left without thinking. Back on solid earth.
 
Small seeds stick in our shoes, trying
to grow into every future possible.

Still unplanted in our new sphere of rust.
Is it Leopold’s ghost we divine in the craters,

pulling his plough through bone heaps? Reap
a calcium feast, intestines filled with final teeth.

Carnivorous landscape, you said, not for our taking, the way we ate the last world.

The bridge we crossed is lined with dust.
Even our dreams can’t go back.

Their pale ships sail the garnet plains
and we aim our greatest hopes at them.

Now the small kernels we sow become
weapons, every sprout a shot fired.

Listen to each crackle, you said, in that lonely mix tape you have on repeat.

Crumbs in the labyrinth : a phantom finger pausing
everything : an excess of empty between songs.

This maroon sky is forever. It squeezes out
new days like boulders, no birds to call them in.

All we discover here already has a name, a place
in an existing conversation, a ritual use.

We thought we knew, you said, what being human was. It means nothing now.