Travelogue
Blue nights draw a border
around the imaginary.
I imagine the branches,
which are mangling
a sky spangled with night again.
Out there, a doomed star
makes a noise
like how the quiet yells out to the living.
Now the damp mouth beautiful with trees
draws a shape inside of the painting.
The landscape painters say beauty
is a line in the shape of an S,
like flight, rattlesnakes, or magic blooming.
Stones are standing side by side in a field again
and the Easter Island heads tell a story about time
we keep retelling with motion,
the two possibilities being
whether you will lead or follow your body.
Maybe into being beautiful. Otherwise into wreckage.
Our skins remind me
of how heaviness
enters through a trapdoor.
Listen at the door, and elephants
are making invisible music again,
scales at the scale of minutes, water.
See how the animals sing to each other,
at long distances, in infrasound.
As our hands sweep low over the Mojave,
kissing mallow, five-spots and Spanish needle,
as my cab driver modulates the radio dial
on an endless foreign road, asking me
where I come from. My bark
and howl.
We go driving past
a bark of trees. Howls
encircle my hair like a crown.
On my person, many borders across which
only the unsaid could pass.
I leave my body everywhere.
ξ
"Travelogue" was first published in American Poetry Review.
Hua Xi is a writer and artist. Their work has appeared in The Nation, Boston Review, and elsewhere. They love large leaves.
Relish: An Internet Archive is a twice-monthly column featuring poems, stories, and essays that were first published in print literary magazines and journals but have no former presence online. This initiative strives to disseminate more excellent writing to a wider audience. To submit to this column, please read our submission guidelines.