Summer 2023 | Poetry
Jose-Luis Moctezuma
Two Poems
Black Box 1.3141
it is said a snowplumed raven opened the box and let out the daylight
the blackness of time and the raven became one wide ray of thought
unsplit he sang in her throat as she drank from the featherseeded cup
unblemished he swam in her womb and stretched the tree of likeness
castigated the whitehearted raven was smoked over the coals of wrath
it is written that the blackness of the box became the raven’s blackness
Black Box 2.5926
it is written epimetheus opened the box & let out the directions
the division between the spoken and the omened is brighter than
her kohl eyes in the pale gold of a morning the core of eris’s
apple litters fate’s passageways from a sealed box we retrieved
the lifespan of a plane we learnt a black raven picks at his torso
it is said we eat the night in our sleep until daylight spills over us
Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a xicano poet based in Chicago. He is the author of a chapbook, Spring Tlaloc Seance (Projective Industries, 2016), and two poetry books, Place-Discipline (Omnidawn, 2018) and Black Box Syndrome (forthcoming from Omnidawn, 2023). His poetry has most recently appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Tyger Quarterly, Peripheries, Postmodern Culture, and elsewhere. You can read more about his work at jlmoctezuma.com
Jose-Luis recommends Fantastic Architecture, edited by Wolf Vostell and Dick Higgins, the film, Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and the song, "Eisbär" by Grauzone.