Magali Roy-Fequiere
At the Kami Gate my shoes, a dusty ochrethe birches fanned by gustsat the throat of these mountainsnight is so present hereits darkness,a tongueat my shoulder bladesthe stars,a belated notionthat punctuatesgriefa bird trapped in this tenthurtling itselfagainst the reliefof space Chance Meeting Causing the Reader to Think of Her Impermanence Homenaje al poeta Jim McCurry Open the bookto find the scribblings of the man who last owned it.His quite legible handwriting,a metonymyfor the fingers that held the red pen. Find your way up to his bony, agile wrist,—imagine it so—Its cadences festooned marginswith definitions, references to chapter five, notes reminding him to look for Zenand the Art of Archery. Peruse the rest of your loot—for loot it is, at what you paid for the lot—Feel the giddiness.Where else in this town of corn and soyfieldscould you have found:the collected works of Chögyam Trungpa, minus volume three, Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom, A Cave in the Snow, and the very promising Smile at Fear. Puzzle over the man’s now wise, now cryptic notes“The three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering, and non-self.” “Lydia, when it fizzled.” “We do not exist, but life does.”“Hope = grasping, p. 16.” “Continuity, but of what?” Start reading your books in earnest.Realize that by the time you get to Meditation in Action, you’re starting to love Jim, this lively phantom who writes you.
The sacrum has thoughts traveling at the speed of decadesbone and synapse rebroadcast the feel of vinylcar seats, starched dress, and backside unwinding flametrees and roadto early morning doorsand a small church crowdat San Martín de Porresbroom and bread-basket Bodhisattva of the poor and black Don't fault the change of seasonsor seeing that woman—hair, shoes, silent eyesMala in hand, touch the words bead over smooth beadLet go Magali Roy-Féquière’s work has appeared in African American Review, various Cave Canem anthologies, Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, and the 2019 Playa Anthology. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Voices of Our Nations, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Bread Loaf-Orion, and has been a recipient of a summer artist residency. She holds a doctorate from Stanford University, and is the author of Women, Creole Identity, and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico. Desiderata: to infuse her poems with spontaneous perception and movement.
The sacrum has thoughts traveling at the speed of decadesbone and synapse rebroadcast the feel of vinylcar seats, starched dress, and backside unwinding flametrees and roadto early morning doorsand a small church crowdat San Martín de Porresbroom and bread-basket Bodhisattva of the poor and black Don't fault the change of seasonsor seeing that woman—hair, shoes, silent eyesMala in hand, touch the words bead over smooth beadLet go Magali Roy-Féquière’s work has appeared in African American Review, various Cave Canem anthologies, Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, and the 2019 Playa Anthology. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Voices of Our Nations, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Bread Loaf-Orion, and has been a recipient of a summer artist residency. She holds a doctorate from Stanford University, and is the author of Women, Creole Identity, and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico. Desiderata: to infuse her poems with spontaneous perception and movement.