Numen

Provocation, voicelet,
what moves in me awaits
credulity, a torn sheet in which to wrap its weight.
Solicitous attendant, o pilgrim, from the charnel
house you must transpire,
a shudder, a complaint.
~
What stirs is not ancestry.
Nor the inception of any one blood.
But the insistence to wake,
to bear witness, comes
as a stranger, from no one’s mouth, no
other arrangement.
~
Your tongue, speech-pocked, unnerved, a whip
circling overhead.
My body forced to it, listening and
listening.
The imagined crack, its hiss, or what
it might have said:
let those believe who may.
A summons
(let those believe) that gathers
to itself a certainty, (let those believe
who may) the more
it leaves one behind.
~
And belief now an unrest, growing
singly in search of a pair,
the absence of some other, your voice calling
out to me —
skeptic, refuser, Thomas’ head
as it continues to shake.
(know this)
I would not be here without you.

Joshua Kryah
Numen is reprinted from Glean (Nightboat Books, 2007).