Decoding Geomantic Shadows
by Jason S Polley

For Numair Asif Choudhury, posthumous author of Babu Bangladesh!

Then these cooing alabaster knights,
Sweet dule of shipshape doves,
A flight of achromatic light,
Awed augury of Arrival
Enitting community.
An eminent unity,
Dome of home.
Cathedral.
Parcel;
Cloud;
Flock.

A sympathy of strangers projecting shadow’s antonym,
Belonging’s presage; an irradiating bone-white spotlight.
A chandelier of angled crucifixes intoning aurorae of allure.
A clarion-call intuitively effacing Babel towers of ardent coveting.
Mariner, crier, pilgrim: all necks on-deck uplift. Poetry’s Albatross freed.
Repealed casuistry; artless proposal; noble-winged dissimulation.
Disrobed wings; shawls & Hombergs unbosomed; rapture.
Sun-kissed limbs soundlessly saluting sheltering Arcadia:
Swift kinship eclipsing cognomen, tabernacle, & insignia.

Fleet;
Mass;
Colony.
Chorten.
Eyes as lambent
As lighthouse beacons.
Who gifts reverie’s beckon?
Who heralds agency’s becoming?
A communion of oblation & acceptance,
A bending where the allegorical & literal consolidate,
Tranquil murmuration, serene susurration; seascape symphony.

 

Jason S Polley is an Associate Professor of literary journalism, comics, experimental criticism, and contemporary fiction at Hong Kong Baptist University. He divides his time between reading, scuba diving, running, practicing yoga, motorcycling, and skateboarding. His current research interests include SF, Canadian Lit, heroin realism, and Indian English fiction. His creative nonfiction books are the Indian travel-narrative refrain and the Hong Kong underworld novella cemetery miss you. One day he’ll be a birder.