Through shattered glass and sheeted furniture, chicken wire and piled dishes, sheared-off doors stacked five to a wall, you're walking like cripples. Toward a dirty window, obstructed by stacks of chairs. And once you move them, one by one, palm circles through the grime and cup your hands round your faces, finally able to see through— Charged night. Sheet-flashes of green, threaded with sparks, the pale orange pan of the moon— Finally, what turns the wheel: the moon ghosting a hole through a rainbow, the rainbow's rage to efface the moon, which the moon sails through slow as a ship, in the shape of cross-legged Buddha... Lotus-folded, a figurine. The kind you once found in the Chinatown markets, for a dollar and a dime— Saying you're dying, you're dead. You can withdraw from this orbit of mirrors.
Copyright © 2011 by Dana Levin. Reprinted from Sky Burial with the permission of Copper Canyon Press.