Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb

• ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION

•  
• December 2016 
•  
•  
•            1 
•  
• Try every key 
• one will throw the bolt 
•  
• Yeah major keys 
• and ominous ones 
•  
• Yeah jailer’s door’s 
• tied in sari corner
•  
• Yeah reverse french braid 
• and winter nape-loc
•  
• Yeah maximum security bolt 
• and bolt of Indra 
•  
• Yeah first contraction 
• birth on steps 
•  
• Yeah broken dam-latch 
• the flood that follows
•  
• Yeah hair gone white 
• yeah smash of madness 
•  
•  
•            2 
•  
• Hope for some great cataclysm 
• break fall on a clinging shrub 
• So: stone walls slump 
• into thin streets 
• buck and buckling 
• white dust rises 
• pulver of grout 
• the smoke of sudden fires 
• streams out like flight 
• settles with the ash 
• on the hands of the pines 
• on the salix humboldtiana 
• on the tops of the hills 
• on the cerro san cristóbal 
• on raw eyebrows 
• raised in shock 
•  
•  
•            3
•  
• Everything is new 
• and everyone is dead
•  
• The ones who are not 
• wish fervently to be
•  
• Garden eels burrow 
• ocean drains down their tunnels
•  
• freshwater eyes the storm 
• boulders race down the slopes 
•  
• to be together 
• decommissioned cannonballs 
•  
• No pipeline 
• yes Nazis 
•  
• No safety 
• yes heat of people 
•  
• No platform 
• yes scaffold 
•  
• No protest 
• yes fire 
•  
•  
•            4 
•  
• Law is done
• history canceled 
• slates clean 
• wolves out 
• tooth and claw 
• nursemaids and no milk 
• incessant revolution 
• lonely animal