Ambient Noise in Sharp Relief
Bring me a wider column of air
And let’s be gentle with our lives
Or else make our blows decisive.
This was meant for propping up
Against the shape of another shape,
An easel’s shadow sunned onto canvas.
But I can feel the empire in my language
And my language fighting back.
And it’s a wild place growing in me.
The task is always at the precipice
Of fury. And I am always only just
Discovering my fingers slurring
To show the work. As in the word 뜯어
as I 뜯어 the word off my lip. The word
fungal as I dance to a scar of light in this
glass. In this world of glass. Along the
thin line between emphasis and erasure
runs a razor. The God Thread is here
again. Back from fog. In piercing red.
Jed Munson writes from Seoul. His debut chapbook, Newsflash Under Fire, Over the Shoulder, is forthcoming with Ugly Duckling Presse.