Quantum Tunneling: a user’s manual
“Light upon light is darkness”—Vanessa Onwuemezi
i
you stood between the memory of the man and a whisper
stonenotes and some forlorn longing, the sky
graffitiing a decrypted past
carry her under the roof, old man, she wrote
you a basket of shadows and snarling buildings
the world rises snaggle-toothed
god the intemperate night unfolds
tongues lift all the equestrian hoof-flying sense
and what have you done to spin the cackle and run
enough, enough
ii
you stood beneath the earth that fell in the undergrowth
the cadence of the language’s tick at the altar
syntax tunnelled in the retelling, shift
gut and string of the world’s ticktocking, snap
near the nightmarket an obdurate Matsu inside Songshan Ci You Temple
a merchant inordinate in the shape of her bargaining
words, tongue between teeth we lose ourselves to the dark
the pause between lives and the rickety bridged, irreconcilable space
both of us, sister, both of us
all that beautiful unsoundable noise following
a leap and then the dream, enough
our bodies made of memory come as swallows1
gollum hearts and claye language
thumbtacks in the wall
iii
darkness upon darkness is illumination
gleam gawking wildeyed and sure between the sheets of the day
that magicmaking between our legs and the loss
grief synapsed between our ears
the eyes have it, do they
may not in this lifetime or on this city of stone, hot and noisy
we too have become re nao-ness, 熱鬧
nearer the dawn, the farther we too fell
and the world was dark inside the wolf.
1William Maxwell
2 Atwood
