by Keziah Cho
There are stalagmites and stalactites
in the classroom ink percolating in drips where
he used to pace up and down flailing his arms about
panoramas in Du Fu’s verse an angry Rorschach test
on the podium erosion forcing through the craggy plaster
bitten down by wind and beaten down by wave.
There are the brittle shells, the hardened hollows.
Hallowed be these depths.
Sometimes I think they’re still reciting poetry,
there must be something in the mineral peaks
reminding them of bigger places. Like the
headland outside the window bird’s eye view the
drowsy parabola of cliffs, the slow
coastal undulation fistfuls of sand going going
gone. Now, though, I’d like to see you try and calibrate
the risks of climbing calculate the danger
of aspiring to more than this capsulated
line of desks. I’d like to see you think of something to do
that’s not capitulating that’s not scratching immutable laws
into the plastic thinking i would’ve done something
watching the water come in twice a day
hoping it breaks through the great wall of
limestone. when the school across from your flat
caves in you can watch through binoculars/ a microscope
it’s so quiet here and we’re
crystallised in the
wane of pencil graphite
breathing in the acrid tide of asphalt and
granules of chalk
ash like september drifting
beneath the classroom and the layers of sediment and
dried blood
our breath ebbs and flows with the red moon
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 