One
One
Marisa Lin
And he remade the remarkable.
Before him, the earth a pail of nothingness
where dark ate oceans, rocks belched sorrow—
pausing, indefinite, over the shore
of weakened man,
store-bought woman,
his eyes lifted airplane windows
with views portaling
into forever—
Forever. How long his string
of longing for the muttering hordes
massed along the shores? His baby
palms could hardly clasp
his mother. In that soulful dark,
infinite river, tails lashed upon his back,
shimmering blood-love tattoos
on wasteland, escaped light cascading
to sun-stroked forehead
that recalled the carpenter’s hand
on his, showing how to fashion form
from wood, strength from coarseness,
from his eyes the fallen seem to rise,
seem to peel from the bark,
the pit, the pail
of original dark, above which and hovering,
humming I wanna dance with somebody
as he shaped man and ferocious woman,
his jailers and teachers, creatures
frantic and fated. Belief a beast
that wanders, and so
he declared to the mothers of Palestine,
It is done. To caged maids, sister slaves,
Done. For brethren slung down,
street-slained, homeless-maimed, Done
in the sweaty fields to storm-whipped boats,
Finished—yes, too for children
who rape, cut, and steal. For melodies
piercing the night still tender our ears,
cannot extinguish his song.
Chants billowing across wilderness,
trees bending to beaches, snakes shivering
in their scales, Oh, the wondrous cross—
Oh, but have they listened? Free at last—
but do they see? Before, in peace
who could have breathed,
or praised these skies
without deceit?
No lung,
not even one.
Marisa Lin
Poet & Writer
Marisa is a daughter of Chinese immigrants and an immigrant herself who grew up in Rochester, Minnesota. She began writing poems during her senior year at Stanford University, where she graduated with a BA in Economics. Marisa is an alumna of the 2021 Community of Writers and VONA workshops and her work is forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson and Clerestory Magazine.
Photography by Rupert Porpora