{"id":3561,"date":"2025-04-17T16:06:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T16:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2025-04-17T16:06:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T16:06:32","slug":"from-aquarius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/2025\/04\/17\/from-aquarius\/","title":{"rendered":"from Aquarius"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Sophia Terazawa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
for my teachers, Susan Briante, Farid Matuk,
and Brandon Shimoda, who brought me to the line<\/em>

                                                                                             [i]

Years will quiet all memory: the water jar behind a courtyard, fabric and

November through December having been driven to terrible heartbreak, we, who can blame no one, would pack seven years of notes

If those are

\u2014rose quartz

\u2014a dead desert rose

Unified future will perform with a band

Bits of afternoon pull up, therefore we

\u2014who sit for our turn like L\u00ea V\u0103n L\u1ed9c in Cyclo <\/em>watching his sister polish a customer\u2019s shoe

\u2014our own ensemble cast

\u2014who will ascend the Gate of Virtue keeling with the crowd at T\u1ebft, who sob openly for so much want

\u2014and the horsemen dismounting

\u2014who will command them before our time

\u2014who will ace the royal exams, our eighty-one names on the shells of turtles

Rejecting purple in all forms would be Confucius, Book Seventeen, though Wang Bi on chaos will drape the Analects<\/em> in red-dyed fabric; if we begin there, somehow

\u2014with X\u00edch L\u00f4<\/em>: yellow paint and blue paint, depictions of torture unlike our country or a dream

\u2014where is it now in the dream

\u2014a little dialogue: please, can you hold it level, I\u2019ve been ascending those steps my brother screaming all the way up

\u2014I won\u2019t forget it, how can I

Bring the meaning of lighter fluid on flesh

Bronze horses realistic

\u2014a pulse having been felt galloping through the smaller gates

\u2014a furious monk in the fourth courtyard well on his way between dynasties

Eye of winter, believe us

Eying the place originates an organizational method

\u2014who will pluck the instrument and who will listen from outside a low screen

\u2014the low fog

\u2014motorbikes passing, passing one another in kind

\u2014this place partially lit by incense, which is to say, world of smoke, end-to-end murmuration

\u2014the low cooking pots

\u2014in Nostalghia<\/em>, candles long as want

Domiziana Giordano-spun shadow clicks away for the present to condemn me or you, who will rush

\u2014between halls: our towels slopping to the floor

\u2014between towns: a poor rumor about cowbells haunting an empty pasture

\u2014between Books Six and Seven: the plough ox

\u2014subject, place, August snow

\u2014where, in cinema or philosophy, I separate notes among you, who can be many or two or just one who will

\u2014between mirrors: follow along to proceed unafraid in the gray pasture

\u2014between breathing and a scene, who will turn on a heel, say: oh, Eugenia, you must release every dove

She shakes her head: I can\u2019t, I won\u2019t

And the candles horrify without breaking

\u2014dust on the altar

\u2014procession

\u2014bowed shoulders, a slip modest

\u2014alluvial brown stockings visible beneath the skirt hiked as she bends slightly forward

To be clear, the book smells

On the fourth ambiguity, citing Donne, Empson outstretches both hands where the tapering seams

\u2014a tiny knot going over itself

\u2014running stitch

\u2014satin stitch detail: coral blossom cupped in more fabric out to dry

Ziggurat<\/em>, a new smell going back

\u2014the jar with collected rainwater sits for 950 years at the Temple of Literature; three years will sufficiently draft a spirit

\u2014shaking her head: such will harms me

\u2014will the years correct how I had met particular wares of indignity;

\u2014to love a loveless singer means watching him break a cassette player from my mother onstage

\u2014the one she got to practice English, the one she gives, has given

\u2014the mistake\u2019s grammatical

\u2014voice-mixing pronouns with tense; it\u2019s okay, someone else says bubbling

Ambiguity mismatching a green leaf

Balakian, who will write about the Towers and Coke, lyrical starlings over morning traffic

\u2014who will go to Rome and write about tombs

\u2014who will write past Lorca; green will scuttle differently; these are faux-satin but the grain

Film: on which everyone writes

\u2014these are numbers

\u2014dot for a needle

\u2014dot siren, coast near dusk, little cars wend the cliff; we, so few in bad lighting, look for the cypress centuries old on a crag of its own; we tremble here tucking eight legs beneath a shawl

\u2014Eugenia waits nearby; she will

\u2014autobiography of witness: standing-room only

\u2014Daughters of the Dust<\/em>, Eula by Alva Rogers

\u2014baby adrift in sequence: play, play

\u2014will the harm needle out companion books for perpetuity

\u2014yes\/no

Everyone, within frame, will say cheese

\u2014at the pool party where Jarmusch plays softly in the backdrop: Hamdan\u2019s guttural background night, \u201cHal\u201d

\u2014drumming horses will concretize

\u2014drumming into the image\u2019s outer frame: Tilda Swinton as Eve before Adam

\u2014drumming engine starting up the way heat palpitates at elemental cues

\u2014dust-driven

\u2014the drumming will wax and wane

\u2014the drumming musicians seated will swoon having, for both performances, fasted on melons, for the sweetest melody calms an angry angel

\u2014the drumming will likely be forgotten

\u2014dragon fruit, banana

Speedway, down which Kou and Leo will carry each shoe thrown off

\u2014who, having thrown those shoes will be our secret

\u2014who, having read by candlelight will quote Faiz Ahmed Faiz, \u201cBefore You Came,\u201d eye to jasmine

Left or right on the roundabout, it won\u2019t make for beauty though

Left on Cankarjeva

\u2014she will live for thirty days in the rose singing: why do fools

\u2014a stitch across her book cover and the sky less poisonous

\u2014an aria from Ma\u00efwenn

\u2014a glass flute like fire: Donizetti\u2019s \u201cIl dolce suono\u201d on CD

\u2014a glass table clattering when the coffee arrives

\u2014four candles, precipitous stacks of rugs

\u2014a gold-leaf serving tray

In the corner, someone is mending rips on a shirt sleeve

In the corner

\u2014devout: I will wait for that touch

Taurus, who will wait afield, cloud-covered castle of months in which there are no ceilings, just composition and

\u2014light will petal behind their eyes; who will wait for our diva, to and fro among acts, a precise departure and

\u2014the dance surging up from her feet, the cloak, and

\u2014who will show that light in a single, terrifying move

In the corner again: news of war beyond recognition

\u2014Eula\u2019s Unborn narrator

\u2014N\u1eafng Chi\u1ec1u sung by an unnamed duo in a restaurant open entirely spilling out to the street, the motorbikes in blue fluorescence

\u2014Yasmine, who throws her head back, will be in Lebanon

Yet, what will protect us if language falls

Pritlicje after closing is a line with me and Anon<\/em>: we were dancing dead sober in the Robbov vodnjak at 2 a.m. to your Flying Lotus album; I was in love, I willed it in my dark strawberry dress

\u2014all of Carniola permitted this, thank you

\u2014all of me crept over the shell-lip and down the steps into water, thank you

\u2014all of water took me and

\u2014thank you, rose quartz from Fatima

\u2014howlite from Fatima: do you remember swinging our bodies around in Tucson on Sylvia Street beneath the full moon, our bodies like a funnel-stone tornado; we had gone to Isaac\u2019s party with wicker baskets on our heads

                                                                
<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Sophia Terazawa<\/strong> is the author of three collections, Winter Phoenix, Anon<\/em>, and the forthcoming Oracular Maladies<\/em>, a finalist for the 2023 Noemi Press Book Award. Tetra Nova<\/em><\/a> is her first novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Sophia Terazawa for my teachers, Susan Briante, Farid Matuk,and Brandon Shimoda, who brought me to the line [i]Years will quiet all memory: the water jar behind a courtyard, fabric andNovember through December having been driven to terrible heartbreak, we, who can blame no one, would pack seven years of notesIf those are\u2014rose quartz\u2014a dead… Continue reading from Aquarius<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4998,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[59,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-seventeen","category-poetry","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4998"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3562,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions\/3562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.lsa.umich.edu\/mixtape\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}