Joshua Kryah

Numen

Provocation, voicelet,
what moves in me awaits
credulity, a torn sheet in which to wrap its weight.

Solicitous attendant, o pilgrim, from the charnel
house you must transpire,

a shudder, a complaint.

~

What stirs is not ancestry.

Nor the inception of any one blood.

But the insistence to wake,
to bear witness, comes
as a stranger, from no one’s mouth, no
other arrangement.

~

Your tongue, speech-pocked, unnerved, a whip
circling overhead.

My body forced to it, listening and
listening.

The imagined crack, its hiss, or what
it might have said:

let those believe who may.

A summons
(let those believe) that gathers
to itself a certainty, (let those believe
who may
) the more

it leaves one behind.


~

And belief now an unrest, growing
singly in search of a pair,

the absence of some other, your voice calling
out to me —

skeptic, refuser, Thomas’ head
as it continues to shake.

(know this)

I would not be here without you.

Joshua Kryah

Numen is reprinted from Glean (Nightboat Books, 2007).

Posted on October 10, 2007 5:53 AM