jericho - Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

J is for Jericho because walls exist

*

J is for Jericho because it has an incredible history.

J is also for John Wilkinson.

Wilkinson's lyric poems have a varnished purity.

They glisten with every turn of phrase.

Wilkinson has a book titled Reckitt's Blue.

The book begins with an ekphrasis of The Swing.

The woman in The Swing is wearing a pink dress.

It could be carmine or coral or amaranth.

In Tornada, there are flames and how they smoulder.

The final two lines are portentous.

There’s the image of a bat, pink like the woman.

How it glides through a vast body of light.

Sundown in Jericho had the same orange-pink.

Jericho is the City of Palm Trees.

There were settlements there as far back as 9000BC.

I named a character Jeremiah.

Jeremiah has the same burst of sound as Jericho.

Then there was Geronimo too.

I knew a woman from Jericho.

She showed me the two scars across her chest.

She used her finger to trace their lines.

I could hardly see them because she had a tattoo.

Right across, it was a bridge of all kinds of flowers.

They might have been carmine or coral or amaranth.

She told me her cat climbed Zaccheus’ Tree.

What did he see? I asked.

Enough of Jericho, she said.

She told me about the monastery.

It’s built on a cliff on the Mount of Temptation.

She said she ate dates there, and scattered the seeds.

What did you see? I asked.

All of Jericho, she said.

All of Jericho but the Wall.

*

J is for the joy of small acquaintances.

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Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (born 1971) Malaysia

Source: poetry.sg