Anurak Saelaow, Singapore-New York
… at once apparent, the bats—obscure as periods—
were penciled in and tunneling over the Colorado,
yawing overhead, gilding lines of force or structure
across the evening’s weight. Tensile sprays of tinsel
warped about a terrible brow of sky. I see it now.
Exhale between steel boughs, spitting up some
winged utterance that asserts itself in half-light,
sputum or hairball of desire given form
and sent screeching into night. What is a throat
if not an arch? I am a girder, bent, churning out
this furred and brooding cache. Fervor’s eruptions
probe or cast themselves against horizon,
multiplied against muddy water. I see this
and want to know that I am still emptying,
that the body’s arc still defies relief.
Anurak Saelaow has been published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cultural Weekly, The Kindling, Ceriph, and elsewhere. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System, 2015), and holds a BA in Creative Writing and English from Columbia University.