Karma*

We squat unbroken,
faces toward the earth,
feet on the shoulders
of the one below us, fingers
covering their eyes as we cup
their heads between our palms,
as if reading their minds,
feeling the weight of others
on our backs, their warm hands
blocking our sight, generations
of shiny bodies stacked
like vertebrae pierce the sky,
curved and determined, graced
by our articulations,
destiny behind us.

 

 

*23-ft. brushed stainless steel sculpture (2011) by Korean artist Do Ho Suh, Besthoff Sculpture Garden in City Park, New Orleans, Louisiana, which can be seen here.

George Such is currently a third-year English PhD student at University of Louisiana, Lafayette, where he has been awarded a University Fellowship. In a previous incarnation, he was a chiropractor for twenty-seven years in eastern Washington. His poetry has appeared in Arroyo Literary Review, Barely South Review, The Cape Rock, Dislocate, The Evansville Review, and many other journals, his nonfiction in Phoebe, and his collection of poems Where the Body Lives was selected as winner of the 2012 Tiger’s Eye Chapbook Contest.