It is as though the world funnels into the center of this poem. Specifically, with the image of the man with the cane, the strange animal arriving from within his dream, and then Saint Paul walking into his becoming. This last image and idea are the result of my recent submersion in the writings of Eric Santner and Alain Badiou on the call or the charge that draws Saint Paul and Joan of Arc, a call that is revelatory and yet, aside from its revelatory nature, is without meaning. I think, when reading the poem, it becomes clear that it’s indicative of a shift, a glimmer of something new that has not yet shown itself but will soon appear.•
This poem appears in Issue 26 of Alta Journal.
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Nutella smeared on cardboard.
Darth Vader
child-sized T-shirt.
Silver, metal desert.
White diaphanous pearls
of white sugar
mixed with warm water
and powders of milk.
Telepathy, a starlike
pattern of questions
in German, unanswerable
sequestered at the edge.
A man, his face
coated in the soft warm
white of child’s cream.
A cane in his hand and an animal
coming out
from the meow of the dream.
Saint Paul, alone
along the road
walking silently
into his becoming.
Sleep as act
or ritual
in preparation
for death.
What is the question,
she asks.
There is darkness. Then
there is another,
further,
darkness.
A child’s woolen blanket
covers me.
Cream and fawn
plush animals
held together
with glossy ribbon.
What, Sabine asks,
is the question.
Cynthia Cruz is the author of Hotel Oblivion, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2022. She’s also published seven other collections of poems, including, most recently, Back to the Woods; two books of essays; and the 2023 novel Steady Diet of Nothing. Born in Germany, Cruz grew up in Northern California. She coedits the multidisciplinary online journal Schlag Magazine.
