Ignatz Invoked Poem by Monica Youn

A gauze bandage wraps the land
and is unwound, stained orange with sulfates.
A series of slaps molds a mountain,
a fear uncoils itself, testing its long
cool limbs. A passing cloud
seizes up like a carburetor
and falls to earth, lies broken-
backed and lidless in the scree.
Acetylene torches now snug
in their holsters, shop-vacs
trundled back behind the dawn.
A mist becomes a murmur, becomes
a moan deepening the dust-
choked fissures in the rock O pity us
Ignatz O come to us by moonlight
O arch your speckled body over the earth.