by Keziah Cho
Behold the flat lighting on the wall, early morning,
shadowless. It’s forty days and nights since the last
reverent exchange of greetings and your head hums
with withdrawal, freezing innit?
Heart in your hand you burn incense
on streets that aren’t yours, car fumes
and Marlboro.
Still there are prophetic visions like bad reception:
corpse grey streets/ windless August typhoons/
still-warm blood from fresh sacrifices
(eyes wide open)
reappearing in the periphery
and myself in the backseat.
Nobody knows the sanctity of my mourning like the mystic
Uber drivers who take me to the airport and back
in the early morning when stoners
sing loudest to God, grinning at the veiled dusk
as we the multitudes raise up this offering. This holy blood
from learning to lip-read across nine thousand
kilometres of space. This long slow combustion
on the upper deck altar of the 10 p.m. bus. An aroma
most pleasing to the Lord.
Keziah Cho is a first-year undergraduate studying English at University College London, born and raised in Hong Kong. Her writing is either forthcoming or has appeared in Pi Magazine and the Cheese Grater, and she has an especial passion for poetry. She hopes to pursue a career in either academia or journalism.
Emerge Literary Journal 