Volume 70, Number 2 · Spring 2021
About Issues Submit The Peak

To visit the country of shadows

Luke Munson

construct a mirrored cube, open at the top
and 65 cubits squared. Within, assemble

 

four glass panels at a 45° angle
from the center square. Someone is at
the door. Your name is on their tongue.

 

It sounds like nothing you’ve heard before:
coin for the passage. Lie down
within the innermost cube during the new moon.

 

Don’t fall asleep. Shadows are
gracious hosts and ask for little,
but bring a gift if you can manage: say,

 

the memory of a candle, freshly lit.

Luke Munson’s work appears in Arcturus and Mirage #5. He wrote and helped produce, with the LA artists’ collective Die Kränken, a video play which was in exhibition at the Univeristy of Southern California’s ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives in 2017. He has an MA in poetry from the University of California, Davis and lives in the Bay Area.