Phantom

by L.Q El

In waking I am whole until I meet with the living

and must parlay for my sense of self. 

I am half of you and you are ilk of nothing 

same as air and sea foam. 

Was it you who whitened all those salt lines on the shale?

Was it some sort of breadcrumb trail? 

In this, I have inherited the sailor’s acquaintanceships

for the void you left is thick and full of splendors and of tricks;

Sun, crucible. Salt, Mars. Brass, mercury. Sulfur. Stars.

I visit the ocean each night in my dreams 

but I never think to turn- is that you behind me?

Is it you who brings me here? 

Turquoise, I saw the wand rusting in Levantine salt

and the chalice in your right hand filled with the Long Night.

The back of your throne an upthrust in the sand,

shield-shaped, ablast in djinn-infested light, 

jacquard and bell-tailed tassels nip 

in the hairs on the back of my neck. 

Was it you at the edge of the kingdom of Allah,

father, 

the ocean dreams only get more vivid. 

When I climb the dunes to the throne above the sea,

who will I be if I find nothing?

L.Q El is a traveling poet, painter, prose writer from Philadelphia. They approach their work and their world similarly- softly detached from reality and with an insistence on romance and space. They reckon with the darknesses of the human experience through this lens of tenderness, to hold a space of dreamlike drama where the magnitude of feeling can be honored. Phantom is a portrait poem of their roots hidden in Morocco.