BY CLAIRE AKEBRAND
CURATED BY RUBEN QUESADA
Night Song
The German word for light rhymes
with nicht. Searching definitions of light:
anything but clear.
When we sing he is light,
do we mean guide? Radiation
of love, or one electromagnetic? Light
bleaches old curtains, inspires sick skin cells to spread
like brush-fire bored boys light
with broken bottles. Burnt—some will have their offerings
no other way. O, Earth, on this offense of light
turn the other cheek and carry us into a night
so dark we have to imagine the world. (Make light
all you want—) One day our lids will be drawn neatly
underground and we will long for light
in any shape: leukos, clair, luz,
Lucifer.
Editor's Note: This appeared on our old site previously.
Claire Åkebrand is a Poetry MFA student at the University of Utah. Her poems have appeared in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-First Century Mormon Poets, and Splash of Red.
Ruben Quesada is the author of Next Extinct Mammal and Luis Cernuda: Exiled from the Throne of Night. He is Poetry Editor for Cobalt Review, Codex Journal and The Cossack Review. His writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, The Rumpus, and Superstition Review. He teaches English and creative writing for the performing arts at Eastern Illinois University. Follow him on Twitter @rubenquesada.