2019 / poetry / author
ALIA HUSSAIN VANCROWN
KNOWLEDGE
…
The girl, bodiless,
prostrates herself
before a giant,
right-leaning eye
angled at 45 degrees.
Genderless, half-lidded
copper electric furnace,
pupil an unearthly fire.
Are you real she asks.
Are you alive?
It blinks once.
Shapeshifting blue-green
angels with symmetrical
wings dance around
the eye, say
look here, now look here.
Everything alive
at once
on a carrier wave
of crackling, buzzing, humming.
From a single blade of grass
defying the wind
to a human being
daily defying death.
Tuning fork within
the core of a planet.
She is here
at the gateway
without loss, mourning,
grief, sadness.
She misses no one.
But she wants to know,
wants knowledge of
the dead.
You are not ready for this
and she is shoved
back down to her body,
entrance atop the center
of her skull.
Awake. Not nothing.
…
Alia Hussain Vancrown has published in journals and magazines in print and online. Her poetry has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She was selected to participate in Winter Tangerine's 2018 workshop, Singing Songs Crooning Comets, featuring seminars by Kaveh Akbar and Aricka Foreman. Alia works at the Library of Congress in the Law Division. She currently resides in Maryland.
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