Children of veins..Ryoko Aoki

When he asked his father about the dream, the old man's reply was brief. It climbed bald through the window one night, loping away from urban ghettos and bar-room riots, the smouldering limbo of shanty towns. Pressed delicate tendrils against a somnolent skull, sang strange spells in esoteric tongues, dispersed at the dome of first light.

Clutched between lithe fingers, a map, meadering creases, wrinkles like a smiling buddha, blazed a determined trail after the dream. Nude feet scaled wavering peaks sketching ashes beneath celestial showers, to rest, the crotch of a valley, nurtured dusken wolves, an umbrella of sky.

Neck craned, flowers bloomed constellations of stars stretching telescoped stems, pluck fairy floss curls of lambent dust. Gaze hypnotic at lurid flames melt earth eagles shivering upwards of lone pines, stark rockets where breath halts, exhale and beat, hiccup, through skeleton lens and firework eyes. Devoured hungry, flash form and fluid flicker, a licking of fragile limbs, and virile rays still onwards, no pause, evolving a perpetual tide.

Lone tree squats on mute hill, prostrate beneath a cupola of stars, wonder lit up like a final cigarette, closed his eyes and smiled as the lines marched triumphant, ants over the curve of his eyes, stroking the vacant drum of his mind, an interminable parade an entire lifetime away.

Emily Wong

Ryoko Aoki