Poetry Is A Hand Made Out Of Sand

—Kyabchen Dedrol སྐྱབས་ཆེན་བདེ་གྲོལ, translation by Lowell Cook and the author

Poetry is the impoverished wick of a spent butter lamp.
Poetry is the dog that scuttles an arc around the master’s thrashing body.
Poetry is the grinding adzi bead’s sacred blood-spot to make medicine.
Poetry is the ash scraped from a well-worn opium pipe.
Poetry is a bull mad with lust, thwarted by an empty field.
Poetry is a smear of dead fish pushed around by waves.
Poetry is our stillborn’s fine black hair, curled around my love’s finger.
Poetry is a fire that feeds on licks of wood and the spaces between.
Poetry is the beggar who wears the wind.
Poetry is the demon of sickness who wears my body.
Poetry worries our questions.
Poetry is the minor official staring into his empty glass, drained of the distilled millet alcohol he loves to feel burning through him.
Poetry is the empty glass staring at the minor official.
Poetry is Raksi, sloshing to rest in its long-necked pitcher.
Poetry fills, empties,
fills.