Three Poems

Jun-long Lee

Helix

I

That winter I changed my clothes into something more opaque. When I had finished, I realized
that I now resembled a menhir, the folds of my garments chalky, hard, and salty. Absurd, to walk
the streets of your childhood dressed as a stone.

II

Unable to view surroundings: smelling nothing—newly fungal—cultivating lichens of nether and
silence. To be completely solid, to bear no brightness or trespasses: no talent for reflecting or
refracting. A simple laying of hands on the shoulders of habitats worn out by touch, with no
transference of heat.

III

Though no one is watching, an opening in the hedges reveals a gap where entry is possible.
Inside, an entity multiplies, but how can I know this. The broodself is invisible and smells like
before, which is the only way to know that it happened. It crawls out in unknown ways on
unknown legs, identical because there is no other form or sound.

Organism

I

By me, a stag
kept for use
in conversion

gaunt missionary
to the soil, speaks
to it tilting

into the ground
heavy ores that
would otherwise

remain with me
where first
they appeared.

The months are
a gift that it gives
to the rooms

where it nests,
a greater hart
growing within it:

the colour of dirt
a friend of mushrooms
its seal encircled

by gentle decay.

Thrown stag,
with other desires,
down corridors

towards drowning;
submersed distribution
of offal and chapters;

a powdered lurking,
weakened,
might remain.

Days where meals
are kept raw,
rooms never left,

streets proposed
to and quickly
abandoned;

the weight of
the body held
still in the

stagnant air.

II

This organism a frequent occurrence in the illuminated records, documentation of rotting; though
the state of decomposition transforms between each description, the smell remains largely the
same: only slight variations in the tones of different fruits and flowers, the wood of floors, age of
garments leaked into wardrobes.

A sulking, heat-without-heat rests in rooms where filtered daylight takes on the shape of
someone no longer identified by sight, freckled by lingering epidermis.

Hillfort

The location was noted: it is definitely there; it has already been named.

Called this, its boundaries are wandered with a few amulets that may not be real; its hedges
contemplated: hoping to spot bluffs, some enclosure leading to another to another, exposed by
staring. To be immured is to be mirthless, mannerisms ataxic to prove this.

A silvered spot picked by seeing; tunneling sight thrown as a warning; rake territories with
burrowing, a burial reflected. To meet yourself upon emerging, wordnulled, staring back at you
with a hand clenched full of similar crystals.