POSTMORTEM, CONCERT
I’m like that once-great composer but buried naked in the fields,
ankle-deep in shit, so the only instruments are the moon & its
expired shadows splintering my skin prism-like. Bell-like, the way
the cairns knock into each other & reassemble themselves. I fall
over & over again. I eat dreams for breakfast & save the skins
for tomorrow. I dance & forget to breathe. I excavate music
from my throat, the kind that attracts all the deer, not the children
& their dying families but certain body parts: seven shards
of antler, the heart & ghost-galloping legs, the bloody palate rustling
in backwaters. Immortal. Certainly unforgotten & bait-like.
Indeed, the bones point skywards & the sky’s a tightening cage,
the field’s a fourth wall, the grass is decommissioned story props &
I’m the sad protagonist in a cheap anthem, where the composer’s
been snubbed by the Internet & time & time again, he’s fallen
back to origin myths. His singers never cry, only splay their eyes
wider with each octave. The story does not echo & the audience
murmurs loudly. Failed translations stain the air. The composer no
longer cares for truth so I find myself sprawled like a deer in the
unnamed forest, watching each beautiful ax descend like a baton.
ankle-deep in shit, so the only instruments are the moon & its
expired shadows splintering my skin prism-like. Bell-like, the way
the cairns knock into each other & reassemble themselves. I fall
over & over again. I eat dreams for breakfast & save the skins
for tomorrow. I dance & forget to breathe. I excavate music
from my throat, the kind that attracts all the deer, not the children
& their dying families but certain body parts: seven shards
of antler, the heart & ghost-galloping legs, the bloody palate rustling
in backwaters. Immortal. Certainly unforgotten & bait-like.
Indeed, the bones point skywards & the sky’s a tightening cage,
the field’s a fourth wall, the grass is decommissioned story props &
I’m the sad protagonist in a cheap anthem, where the composer’s
been snubbed by the Internet & time & time again, he’s fallen
back to origin myths. His singers never cry, only splay their eyes
wider with each octave. The story does not echo & the audience
murmurs loudly. Failed translations stain the air. The composer no
longer cares for truth so I find myself sprawled like a deer in the
unnamed forest, watching each beautiful ax descend like a baton.
Ava Chen is a rising poet from Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming with Diode, The Penn Review, Polyphony Lit, and elsewhere, and has been recognized by Columbia College Chicago, The Adroit Prizes, and more. She hopes you have a wonderful day.
Beaver Magazine 