Artifact by Daniel Moysaenko


 
How you got to Thailand
doesn’t matter much.
It took several decades
though to become a facet
of the terrain. Beneficent
speck in the sudden mountains’
pit. Fjords of grass. You wore
sunglasses because the beards of green
hurt and you wanted to concentrate
on walking for whatever
reason. The river and jungle
and mud and houses and
plains had gold cores.
You forded the same water
a couple times a day for fun.
You looked through binoculars
missing their lenses.
You hiked up your socks and boot
laces but that didn’t help.
Each village you passed through
was diaphanous and silent
as if you had built them
for yourself and forgotten
to invite inhabitants
though you knew the real
inhabitants were there knowing
there were edible flowers
somewhere.
You beat a loop into the ground
scoping each corner
of this parcel until you lost
interest and crossing the river
unaware of your obsessive circling
you became water-logged
and pulpy as clay and barely made
it onto the bank
where you stretched and curled
yourself into a tiny hut
which is the one I live inside of.
The hut that lives inside me.
 
 
 
Daniel Moysaenko holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is the author of the chapbook New Animal (H_NGM_N Books, 2015). Other work has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Oversound, Pleiades, Rain Taxi, and The Volta. He is pursuing a poetry PhD at Florida State University.