James Chung McKenna
from “Long”
In the service of.
Everything upright.
Flames angling toward one devotion, then to the other.
The shape of the floor—everything falling to the ground of the light, from before.
And watched by no one.
In a dover I have been passing.
Deep dover I hold as it holds me.
Deep in a dover as a cutlass in its bed of loam, dreaming of cornflower.
Which is how it looked: up.
Dreaming of sheath.
Dreaming of midwinter.
A hand pulling from the evermore that was now.
And to have dreamt against this dreaming.
To hear its trill.
As I do now.
I hear it in the light.
Tell me how to hold onto this life, and I will hold it that way.
from “Long”
The shape of the coast which seems straight but isn’t.
I will say it how it was.
I was going for hunger.
I was going for what was before me.
I will know You were a stranger, for having left, for You will have walked like a stranger.
Even now I will be susceptible to immateriality and the belief in the faith of motion.
Even now I will hear it what You will have been saying, You keep at saying: Here, take this.
Take this: Here.