Issue 1.7

Salt for Sodom I was fired at one on a Friday afternoon. What else could I do, in my reverie, but drive to the beach? I wanted the sea. I saw a woman half-bared in the tide, bronze with the last laugh of the light. I only looked so long against the wind before the sun left signal flares in my closed eyes, and I turned for home. You should pray to be changed by God— so said my father the night I confessed. I waited for sand to rise through my hands, but only the waves came to ruin with me.

On a Night Like Any Other Here I am a dolphin, a jellyfish, a moray eel. I am collateral, a mercenary reaping as the fisher stars plunge down their nets, their baits, the whole of which draws me up and out, hand over hand, but wants nothing of me. My flesh cannot be sold to the gods in the marketplace. I am all bone and envy, never born to thin air, but hatched in the murk of a trawling: wastefish. Stiff keels cut deep in this sorrowed gloom, as what is flung to the deck is crushed like Cancer, then kicked through the scupper for the codmeat of trade.

Criminals   We paddled out in our kayak to the center of a lake made gold by sunset. From the reeds along the shadowed edge came a disturbance—ripples, the soft splash of fins caught in a torn, tangled, weed-strewn net left forgotten by villagers long ago—two fish, their amber skins cut on the string from thrashing to get into the great water again. We sliced open the net. Bleeding from gills and tails, barely alive, the fish hung in black water, yet swollen with life, eyes and mouths gaping. We took them into the belly of our boat. On shore, we scraped off the gold scales, scooped out the guts, and made a meal from those fish caught by treachery, found by chance. They cooked up crisp in the oil, delicious. When it was all over, we sat on shore, stomachs full, and looked into the dark water like criminals.

Enlil Speaks Across the Alluvial Plain Because they were boisterous and kept the gods awake, Enlil sent a sudden flood. Is it enough to tolerate? My vision not your vision, my leaf on a longer branch, yours near the canopy, near the furthest grasp of sun—*quiet now, the waters come. * He discontinued immortality without remorse, or a mild remorse unrecorded. Is your death greater than my death now that we are mortal? Now that we both bleed tints of red jealousy, all for the cause of bold comparisons—*you’ll be fine, at first.* His assembly sent the Bull of Heaven to slay Gilgamesh after Ishtar was offended. Who is spurned but those who spurn an ill attempt at union? Two rivers diverged, the Tigris swift, the Euphrates enduring, until confluence—*child, your slumber is my rest. *

To Yang Guifei at Mawei Station Pale blue mists, rising above sorghum fields carrying marcescence out of valley’s umbrage— no time for homesick glances, carriages grind on six hundred leagues, from Jiannan to Chang’an simmering nimbus caterwaul. Cuckoos cry in harmony with Daoists’ cantillation, my soul has no control of itself, stirring the skeleton under layers of crimson quilts. I ought to have renounced imperium at Mawei Station. Too late I learned to pray before Guanyin's niche, that begging never wins favors from a Bodhisattva. “She was treacherous: her death well deserved,” I deny it in tears—you are faultless, your fragrance is still unbesmirched. @tab*I dreamt of you dressing* @tab*in a gilded mirror, donning* @tab*your silken-pheasant gossamer,* @tab*rubbing on saffron rouges, waiting* @tab*to hear one soul-snatching incantation.* @tab*If you want (if that brings you home)* @tab*I will promulgate the gods’ will, burning* @tab*down my desires, burning down* @tab*every lacquered idol.* Remember last year’s plum rain? Plumes of smoke engulfed your throat; amidst chaos you broke free of my grip disappearing into the whiteness. No remorse— to the everlasting regret—you surrendered. I know time dwindles to candle’s tears, so I opened Tongguan's gates, clawing at seasons’ crease. I let the river floods in, I wanted the apocalypse.