Once we were closer
Unswallowed by analysis
Wild and quick like mirror glass
But slowly we disciplined the mouth
Tamed it into movement
Spooned it clots of sound
from which other clots came
Under scattered blue shadows
sheets turned back and forth
Babbling softly and without end
Language licks inside the temples
Once we enter it
Old fog from which there is no exit
Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level, recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and finalist for the National Book Award. She lives in New York City.
Image: “Specimen from Antarctica,” 2018. From the National Museum of Natural History.