Babylonia
I am as close to the start as I am to the end.
So these are my instructions. And I can’t hear you,
anywhere. And weather takes place in the home.
Smudge glass to gaze through glass. Clean
every view. Grow root crops, quiet, in the garden.
Keep an empty-ish glade, snot-toned pollen,
a few fat bees. Trap to release the glinting.
Fish. Be mercy. Be burned by the oldest god, the sun.
Bake brick. Stack and paint things cosmic-
blue. Don’t think but think of this
as powdered ground, blown colour of the world,
forever moving somewhere other, crumbling,
bubbling into soup, lipped by a passing breeze.
Galactic forms don’t last. Of course they do.
We revel in their starry, milky dreams.
So carry the god like a baby from the cave.
Lift with your believing, if you can.
Believe it, if you can. Listen to the waves.
Don’t let the clay turn mud. Keep still
as death, or not. Wash death in the bend of the river.
One of many. A series of infinite turns. Capture
each winding like a flag. Haul wind to a new
old town. See all of it all over the sky.
Fear atoms and the circling birds,
the cycles of red they leave, the way they
never, ever remain in bed, or worry
about what’s fundamentally there.
Go loco on a molecular scale,
then carry me back to my hole.
Calm. Placate. Breathe deep and deep.
Lie down like a forest floor.
Fill a box with milk teeth.
Scribble new moons. Plough, plant
and move. Prick new stars and campfire tales.
Talk about the fall, however you see the word.
Journey, wide as the mind-eye tundra.
Turn. Repeat. Stir. Repeat. Leave
all you care for out in the open
to dry, but tie it down.
The weather’s moving.
This storm could be
the ending. The next one,
even more.
Rob Yates
Rob Yates is a British writer hailing from Essex. He is currently based in Charlottesville, where he is completing his MFA at the University of Virginia. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has had work appear via Agenda, Bodega, SmokeLong Quarterly, Envoi, and other literary magazines.
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