A Poem by Oki Sogumi

Pilgrimage

I

A hand makes a motion of clench and release to mimic consonants expelling themselves during speech.
There are many views. If I crouch and then someone topples me over. When all my muscles were ready to say. But instead the tongue splays and does not recover. Or recovers very slowly, having to gather motion. The view from there.
The people who make a living from interpreting their vision tell me it is important to know when to look. Every time I look outside, the sun disappears.
I know that I’m doing it wrong. Language, money, etc. I shut my eyes and walk until I don’t.
I walk and drag my heels, drag my toes. The road is made of stones that catch all the flesh. I would drag my entire body piece by piece. Instead I vowel.
Oh.
Do the same thing. But this time with horizon.
I forgot what I’m rehearsing. But go. On again. The destination is radial, and hard to fathom without seeing all points at once.
Yeah, that series of puddles seen from an airplane and made by a glacier rubbing the earth.
Or the stream that forms when storefronts are being washed of their nighttime blood.
I’m the deflated flan in a white tee falling to my thighs. A picture of this shirt floats in the river.
Saying how it happened is different than the genre of documentary. I ask for cotton to soak in the sockets. Wake me up when the words for this are not necessary. I keep my phone on to record the sounds while I’m gone. The collectors pecking at a foam replica of the planet,

the click of permissions.

II

I touch the divine. I kiss the feet, I kiss the palms, I know the way a candle touches me back.
Can the divine hear me? I guess around the holy mouth. I eat, I hole through the center.
I only know one song, I sing it all the time. The cradle. The crescent. The swerving violet in wind.
I only know one star. Just kidding, I know every star. More intimate is where they are coming from.
My gauze scarf is laden with silver thread. Distortion pedal and fog machine.
My medusa of electrical tape comes through the bodies. Her swaying. My failure to move from my spot.
I was never here at first, I felt my footsteps leave me. The concavity of abandoned structures is fun.
The veil is tears, and oh my god it tears through me, unevenly. A lathe carving a wool sweater.
In reverse, the scenes are odd because the other person disappeared. Now is remote interrogations.
I was used to being inside...