Isabel Bezerra Balée
Golden Hours
We look toward a pair
of neglected binoculars
facing the tidal lagoon
but don’t look through them, count
from our distance instead
an infinite restlessness
of black-crowned herons
crowding five man-made islands
of the artificial lake, heart-shaped
with devils horns. Man made
so many bottlecaps
of this sanctuary & the litter
was shaped by a rhizomatic
collective, the indifferent matter
of autonomous vehicles
bottlenecked like lemon seeds
stuck in the straw
of diuretic ice water, a self-driving
chain reaction disappearing
into wind turbines. As we fly
over Cupertino geoglyphs, say this data
is spoken in tongues & the mouth
spits out the fog advisory, dense
& burned to gold on the final
heat before dusk. I’m a stranger
to this body
not meant
to sustain confinement, red-eyed
against the window
without a seatbelt. The runway
seems to merge
into the Vegas strip
crowned in sun, slot machines aglow
in spires of sun
at the meeting point of all terminals. Delayed
& reclined in the zero-gravity massage chair
I see us nose-diving
through the stratosphere,
falling into a dusky projection
of condominium palaces
scattered across the hills
that appear terraced in some places,
flushed gradients bending our way,
enclosed in a bubble
enclosed by a necklace of lights.
*
The climax documented
in streaks, 100
red paper lanterns
floating on strings
inflated & popped out
like someone breathed
into them & turned
up the brightness,
awakening
the completely
perpendicular hill
in a blackout
when half
the power grid
was shut down
& the autonomous vehicles
were blinking
in perpetuity, not knowing
where to turn
or whose turn
it was. In bathroom line
at the pirate cabaret
a woman opens
her umbrella
& says it’s only misting
outside, I think
we’re in the dark ages
again. Or the darkest year
without summer, when
the sun gave forth
its light without brightness
& collapsed all growth,
no clear shadows
at noon.
*
Onto the next weather
I recover an ebike
from the urinated snow bank thinking
the wrong direction
is the most right. The subzero
tourniquet
compresses our palms
blue, we could still lose
circulation
as our touchscreen gloves
grip the handrails of the frozen
subway escalator & the steam grates
sweep up
assorted recyclables. We’re alone
in the deepest dark
& you are still
warm on the inside, your face
covered in horizontal sheets
of almost-ice, split
into halves of halves
then shrinking away
in the rearview.
Isabel Bezerra Balée received her MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University, and has taught creative writing at Tulane University. Her first book, diluvium // a bluejay, was published by Dogpark Collective in 2021. She lives in the Bay Area, where she occasionally teaches in the community.