This Is Here Now, Building

by Terese Mason Pierre

Refat Ul Islam

This poem is a path This path is a circle

This circle is an animal, is many animals, watching you from all sides as you squat in the forest

This forest is never letting go of destiny, persistent in its oral tradition

This tradition uses stones instead of hands, would have you warm them slowly before drawing blood

This blood darkens your smile and stains your teeth (how you hate uncertainty), is indistinguishable from dirt

This dirt is everywhere and burns skin, but children love to play in it, while their parents mold a mask

This mask covers time, makes it palatable to the uninitiated, who do not know that our universe hides a strange creature

This creature forbids you to be sickened by truth, rolls planets to death, secretes sky

This sky falls and shatters like a theory on ghost limbs coaxed into purchase by hoarders of hope

This hope is ripe with new tongues, plastic brains with combing fingers and unlimited power

This power is distilled not by choice but not by spite dares to unspool itself from its cluttered page

This page is black marker redacting a life story

This story was thrown a few feet and landed in an unimpressive place

This place is a poem

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Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer whose work has been appeared in The Puritan, Strange Horizons, Quill and Quire, and elsewhere online and in print. She is the Poetry Editor of Augur Magazine, and lives and works in Toronto, Canada.