as if by ritual, I enter a polemic
of loss, wherein the axis of grief
lies stitched to the vein of every
hemlock, every arthropod, every
woman’s coarse throat. I swallow
it down: in this room, the scientific
method self-immolates, skeletal
bloodwork coalesces with latex.
her palm leaps into the sermon,
a bell hanging from each polished nail.
in hindsight, there will be motion—
the orchids she might have loved, flourishing
on the dark side of academia,
charred inside out. in hindsight,
there will be a chorus at the centre of
her unnamed body—a physiology
swollen with songs that skew
the hour. dictionaries pleated into the
sand. the words are improvised. carnal.
—From CNQ 111 (Spring/Summer 2022).
Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin is a poet and scientist of Chinese-Mauritian descent whose work has appeared or will soon appear in Grain, The Malahat Review, Brick, The Walrus, Arc, and elsewhere.
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