Alice Coltrane, her harp, fills in the cracks of me
With gold. The Japanese call it Kintsugi.
Where the vessel broken, only gold will permit
Its healing. Its history. It’s *How the Stars Understand
Us*, lemon flowers on the skin of the earth,
Mosquito filled with the blood that sirens its fat,
Long life. Who isn’t dying to leave this house,
To go masked only in the shadow of one’s animal-
Breathing, lonesome, unprotected, knowing
*Nothing lives as foreignness* or death,
That the black dog with the sword in his mouth
Passing from house to house will not bring its itch,
Its ticks and locks clogging our lungs, a permanent
Quarantine—nothing that a little gold
Melted to ichor and spilled into the veins
Won’t seam.
Journey to Satchidananda
Roger Reeves
Roger Reeves is the author of King Me (Copper Canyon 2013) and the forthcoming Best Barbarian (W. W. Norton 2022). He lives in Austin, Texas, where he is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Texas at Austin.