Issue 23: Selena Wisnom

When our lands

when the heavens

when mountain peaks

a thousand years of secret knowledge

signs with sharp rays   

lion-faced births, 

the data to decipher  

and the terrestrial terrors [. . .]

[When the scr]ibe 

[when the mas]ter

[when the king] 

all meticulous to claim 

from the mouths of scholars,

When the scribe

when the sch[ool bo]y 

the multiv[alence of ea]ch sign

of volatile g[ods who] stir us up

riddling semantics x x [. . .]

[. . .] dreams of ravens

[approx. 4 lines lost]

x x much-enduring words

fired in the kiln

so now these characters 

seem almost [. . . ]

They shrink under [. . .]  

I cannot mimic 

which scorched the edge of every wedge

[it is those shadows

but piece together

an incantation  

were not yet named,

bore other names,

were built from clay,

were already pressed on clay,

recording the sky,

anomalous cries,

ominous nights

signified.

had just been trained,

wrote his name,

had stamped his name,

their copies descend from the sages,

stars checked against sheep livers.

took up his reed,

learned to read,

contained the code to read the mind

and speak with their orbits,

[. . .] lizards

and w[aking wealth]

survived

of war-torched blazes, buried

from before the flood

fossilised.

my lamp light.

the sun of Babylon

and cast shadows into the crevices

that were read]

all my tracings, 

to raise the dead.

I dig within

to excavate its signs:

fleshy malformations,

There’s meaning hiding

a hole is death,

a path, a river,

or parasitic

this is how the gods will speak,

The counterpart of highest heaven

the limits of the earth are known –

in all its darkness,

We can bleed the body

the truth is nothing

Sacrifice makes meaning

It takes some force

to open sacred chambers

the body’s walls torn

One graceful slit

to let the light in

And yet the innards

organs not

but in the membranes

and the crucible glistens like the moon

and scars are star-tissue

spun between eclipse-reflected

and I know there is a message

for if a design is drawn

the gods have heard

the body's darkness

fissures and filaments,

excrescences of meat.

in these creases:

a pustule rain,

a gust of wind

track-mark damage –

how I have learned to read,

is not the deepest earth or ocean –

it is the heart

none of us is undeformed.

of its troubles but

clears the mind like violence.

out of slaughter.

to break a carcass,

to the piercing of the sky,

down like sanctuaries.

is all it takes

means to be destroyed.

are picked clean,

obscured by bleeding

I can almost see my face,

is a tear in the sky

and I am a filament

pools of blood,

in this darkness,

in the shape of a cross

the wailing of the land.