Even Afterwards
EVEN AFTERWARDS, AS WIND DISTINCTLY INTERSECTED MY GAZE
EVEN AFTERWARDS, AS MY GAZE ENCOUNTERED ITSELF
…….IN A FILAMENT OF THE WIND’S SUGGESTION
EVEN AFTERWARDS, MY ABSCONDING GAZE
Afterwards,
the wind wove exceedingly through the character of my silence.
Its singularity was calm, silken,
suggestive with brocade, protracted.
The wind then wove through as a characterization of my appearing
Encountering no resistance as my gaze fell year after year
Upon this or any other thing, nor did any resistance befall
Those whose gaze afterwards encountered mine.
Nor did I befall anyone whose gaze encountered me,
Nor did any resistance befall those whose gaze encountered them.
Even afterwards, the wind imposed its relative permanence,
Imbuing surface with a precision coeval to cause.
EVEN AFTERWARDS
Is the emptiness of the object alight?
Are the figures in the image impartially lit?
The trees were decisively discordant,
Moonlight eclipsing any trail figure might have made.
I ran across you in the linguistic insolvency of persistence,
beyond whose gaze continued to strain—I ran across you
in the fragmented perusal of existing, I ran into you, frailly—
Even afterwards,
this sense of objective bodied our parallelism.
The indifference of your true appearing held its beauty up to me:
a protective, though indistinct, gown.
Mountains of Iris
MOUNTAINS (DECISIVELY DISCORDANT)
(Where bound to occur
were mountains of iris)
A woman is looking outside a window.
Whose shadow is cast in the background of a room.
You are looking in.
Something intersects the window.
In the front there is this false mimicry.
Whose shadow is cast in the background of a room.
You are looking in.
Whose shadow comes up from the ground.
In the front there’s this false mimicry.
INTERIOR CASTS ITS RETROSPECTIVE LIGHT
The garden.
………………………The woman.
Something comes up from the ground.
How one returns with one’s face to the outside remains unknown.
How one returns to one’s face.
A PROFUNDITY OF EXTERIOR IN THE IMAGE’S ONLY SURFACE
I turned inwards to reply, “I have not yet moved to change this extant landscape.”
I had not yet turned to say, “Where we might have left ourselves, surface has taken
our place.”
Surface has taken the place of where we might have left ourselves.
WHERIN OBJECTS CAST A PROCEDURAL LIGHT
I turned inwards, towards irreverent balustrades,
…….marble buttresses encased in Platonic thought,
…….bathwater lined in maple, fragility paired with response,
…….or all implications coeval within.
I turned inwards towards a technicolor transparency,
…….wherein light passes through the insolvency of exterior,
…….passing through to illuminate—what?
Of an encounter yet to occur, this failure:
A thinness
allowing technicolour light to pass through.
Nicole Raziya Fong is a poet living in Montréal. She is the author of PEЯFACT (Talonbooks, 2019). Past work has appeared in publications including Social Text, Cordite, The Volta and filling Station as well as in translation in Exit, OEI & Revue Watts.