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宇多田 ヒカル and the Huntsman: Poems by Kazumi Chin

‘This drought of silence / that does not feed me. I mean, I refuse / to hold his vanity. And demand to know / myself better. Cull his soul but only / for memory, carve a history / for myself in which my reflection / alone can be seen.’

By Kazumi Chin
Poetry | Kazumi Chin, poetry
May 23, 2017

宇多田 ヒカル and the Huntsman

Each note, a breaking. Ever since
I crashed my ship into the midst
of him. This desire, invasive species.
Dark and crawling, mouth gargling
sand. I crowned myself in the blood
of a man, sucked the marrow from
his deepest valleys, shipped my ghosts
deep down the barracks of his throat.
To be seen, I severed my wicked
from remembering. The mirror
that speaks but does not hear me.
And the wings ripped from my back,
culled in the dream of another’s
making. This drought of silence
that does not feed me. I mean, I refuse
to hold his vanity. And demand to know
myself better. Cull his soul but only
for memory, carve a history
for myself in which my reflection
alone can be seen. Beneath this flag,
this moon, these chain link walls,
this putrid kingdom—tell them
when the fires spring from beneath
my chest I never asked to be holy.
Tell them I was born in the winter
to a tongue that named me violent.
That I’ve always been, writhing
in the heaviest of songs,
this bright, this unspeakable.

 

 

DEEP RIVER

Knowing also what it means to lose someone so soon. I push my limits at the end of your voice. And follow you there. Fill cups with water poured from the sink. Let the cold wash through me. Fifty miles from me, my ghost, too, is crying. And so I stay up nights singing. Follow your every note like breadcrumbs to my own heart. Where beauty is not the ear or the note, but the space in between. How you sound like a waterfall and then you are. That’s why, that’s why I chose you.