APSARA

Content warning: this piece includes a reference to crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Alt text: A poem of five stanzas arranged in a circle. From the top, clockwise:

fingers became leaves

they danced

under royal eyes, stony stares,

speaking between gods and mortal kings

curved messages exchanging

favors, tidings, pleas

fingers backbend to form

divine gestures of

peace, prayer

from which a flower emerges

thumb and forefinger pinched

offering a gilded flower

the heady scent of

jasmin drapes their shoulders

bodies sheathed in silk

garlands of gold

guarded by

triplet towers

a fruit grows

gentle movements creating

impossible shapes summoning

thunder and rain

soaking skins and fields

making the earth fertile again

another season, life renewed

a cycle cast

over centuries

then falls to the ground

the balance broken

a red sunset hemorrhaging

into the earth

former messengers to the gods

now silenced, extinguished

by a brutal equation

from every ten

one remained

becoming the seed for a new tree

Flower Goddess helped

collect the shapes and stories

reassembled them

pieces ancestors used

to bridge the worlds of

spirits and kings

now bridge

yesterday, today

Kate Stacey is an emerging Australian fiction writer & poet, with work forthcoming in Wilderness House Literary Review. She lives in France. Twitter: @kalousta1