“When I am Devoured by the Pile of Notes, Where Do I Go?”

The First Poetry Prize Winner – 

SUMMER 2023

is Zeran Li

of New York, New York – USA

 

“WHEN I AM DEVOURED BY THE PILE OF NOTES, WHERE DO I GO?”

By Zeran Li

 

When you are held, suspended

By what it feels like the very fingertips of God himself and all his angels

Your brain emptied, upended

All your content is naught because you contain nothing else

 

The blinding light of a train as it comes careening towards you and the blinding white circle expands in your vision and expands in your vision until the blinding white circle is no longer a circle but instead whatever blinding white shape your vision is

 

Now stay there

 

Imagine

 

That the train never hits you

 

But as the vision recedes so does you initial surrealness

And it succeeds into the following illness of the music

You lose it

Like you know no one else has ever lost

 

It used to matter whether I had a mirror before, a reflection

When I still had limbs and a chest and most importantly, a piece of my brain left in me

I needed the mirror to see with my eyes and my brain so that I could see my limbs and my chest

 

Now, the blank wall in front of me is a lovely piece of white that means nothing

Because there’s a resounding pounding surrounding me in my head

Devouring the cowering past me, cower in fear as the scouring continues

Until I am crowned king of this feeling

 

The drums keep going

Bap, bap, ratatat bap

Until I am eaten again

#     #     #

-30-

~a poem by Zeran Li