Turn over in the rain, little panther,
and show your pink belly to the storm.
This world is slick and incommunicado.
The sunlight hushes and hides,
closing the blinds on what the darkness
would tell you. I have traveled in my sleep
to the blue-marked boundary where death begins.
I always come back dragged to safety
by my reliable alarm, that bureaucrat of waking.
Life is an eternal springtime buzzing and popping
but we have mistook it for an earth-sized cog.
We spend our days searching for the missing machine,
the heavenly apparatus we can slip into.
Angelic gears, what transcendence do you work for?
What gods lost you in the war?
We certainly live in some sort of ruins
and go on making more.
Meta-grace fallen into a double dissolution.
Yesterday I was certain there was a love
we could get back to. Today I realize
there is a second labyrinth beyond the door.

 

Seth Jani lives in Seattle, Washington, USA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. More about them and their work can be found at www.sethjani.com.