At the museum is a bronze dagger hilt presented as a fragment
looted before any god bound pleasure to books. You swam north.
We had questions. Quickening were years between war then
rumors of people packed into a cave, singing. I know this one.
It starts with the capital not on fire, vengeance: your middle sister
up a date palm. She clamps a blade in her jaw, calling us back.
Across that way, pieces for devotion dim beneath glass, but
what do you mean by this question of music? In our capital,
far without wind or current drawing fists to sand so blue, some
would steal only to feed another. I have no reason for flight.
Our divas tell an entirely different story. Onstage, seven fan out
elbow to elbow. This irony renounces us. So, how about the god
you couldn’t recognize, who raised a flag forbidden by color?
There were twenty-four arms and sometimes a thousand. Take,
you said with a voice not a song glinting on peace itself. More
crawl today belly-down in grass, waiting for Mother to cross.
She lifts an arm, motions, go, go… In the gallery, I recall
gilt bronze buried with our dead. Eternity lies in a box
with hammers. You motion to the guard watching quietly.
Sophia Terazawa is the author of ANON (Deep Vellum, 2023) and WINTER PHOENIX (Deep Vellum, 2021), a finalist for CLMP’s 2022 Firecracker Award, along with two chapbooks I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press, 2016) and Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press, 2019), winner of the 2018 Tomaž Šalamun Prize. She currently teaches poetry at Virginia Tech as Visiting Assistant Professor.
