Quelled Communiqués, by Chloë Joan Lopez

ISBN: 9781923418491
$17

The Night Citadel

Night is a body, an emaciated man
speared in the pelvis, the belly, the neck—
a jackdaw covered in sweat

that spans a jellied hemisphere with wings
tacked down to stars, the stars with names,
to contemplate the threat

of dreams. For the citadel’s sexagesimal dome
has crowned its fearsome rooms with ink
so that its minaret

may spire into the asymptotic vault.
The horizon swirls, uncurls its arms
of cloud, of violet….

Until the chamberlain occults the chamber
door to say, It’s time, it’s time
to dress. Then, in freshets,

the revenance pools intestate beside
the bed, the baseboards and—with the red
streak of a last garnet—

is mercifully flung, zoetrope and all,
aflame into the grit, to be seared
to hueless silhouette.