Liquid dark slides down our throats, sloshing against curved glass. I place my goblet back on the dash. The evening air shifts, a mineral of many disguises. Body twines within itself. Groaning from the cold, the liver and the heart sit — at the centre of our existence.
†
A deep and pulsating gloomp gloomp, gloomp gloomp, trails along in our wake. Are we disjointed?
Disc-jointed, rattle and bone, calcium, stone; we dance up an alchemy of black water and damp soil. Drag our shoulder blades up and wonder, what does it mean to fall?
†
The male nightingale, I am told, has one of the most complex and sophisticated verbal sounds in the entire animal kingdom. One has to be fierce to survive the wild game and decades of accumulated data reminds us that competition for rights is extraordinarily fierce. So. What interests you? Consider: enmeshment, porosity, permeability.
Consider: manhandling, manoeuvring, belaboured breathing.
Consider: the female nightingale, similar in appearance and mistaken by early researchers as the one who sings song, flies over woodland and dense understorey discerning in their engagement.
Consider: a pathogen can pass the species barrier and by the same token, the decibel of a song has the capacity to infiltrate even the most hardened of ears.
Consider: the most recent non-binary census is a nebulous of numbers—
†
Liquid, dark, glides down our throats and spirals until it hits bone. Staring to the sky, we collect mud in our palms; ready to soothe, primed, to anesthetize. Newfound stasis squares our spines. Diamond tips draft the surfaces of our wounds, scratching them, colouring them, candy.
Photo credit: Manahil Bandukwala
Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent. The author/co-author of six poetry chapbooks, their multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, The Ex-Puritan, Grain, Room, Vallum Contemporary and Watch Your Head, among others. Their debut collection, Blood Belies, is out now with Buckrider Books (Wolsak & Wynn).
