clamoring benediction By Ziyi Yan

The Rising Phoenix Review

Oct 31

jeans chafe in a wasting corridor.
a fly beats itself to death
against the ceiling light.

help us build today from ghost-filled chairs
and paper-smooth walls. the bell too,
strains against its own wavelength.

we worship the crackling keyboard–
bodies burnt to glossy words
between moon-lined pages

and the picking–
keys dug from casings,
nail beds bloody

and the light–
call it a farceofnature,
night's keeper, quarks.

anyway, all we can do is stare too much.
we cannot live without saying we exist
between our waving and the words

that might be the rest of us–
as we touch, or as we lie in bed, unable to tell
an arm on our chest from a broken table leg.

may we type holograms into the screen
before the computer breaks again–
may we leer at our eyes in the dark.

may we beat against the furniture
and the walls we built with our
bodies. there are flies to blot the sun–

all of us, in love or clamoring for air.
guide us to gather our littered limbs, strew them
in jagged lines across the page.

let the things we search for
be somewhere in between–
let us clamor against someone's

salvation.

By Ziyi Yan

Biography:

Ziyi Yan (闫梓祎) is a young Chinese writer living in Connecticut. Her work is published in Poetry Northwest, Rust and Moth, Kissing Dynamite, and Peach Mag, among others. She is also the editor-in-chief of the Dawn Review, a literary magazine dedicated to promoting striking writing and supporting emerging voices. In her free time, she likes to do karaoke and take long walks. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @Ziyiyan___ or visit her website at https://ziyiyan.carrd.co/