Millennial engineers of faltering air, not eschatological radio angels tighten struts, bolts, and cantilevers of eternal design. Angels guard antique equipment, invented in principle by our original architect, logophile, and alpha-omega abba.
Shoulders of unseeded rain encircle the troposphere,
sweet jaggery of ferns.
Northern lights, the auroras, riff magnetic jazz above the poles.
A low-frequency hum
signals human civilization or vice versa—
The long winter salts a tangible road of devotion. Please tune in.
Do you hear me? Radio angels neither hunger nor thirst: Tune in.
Desiderata of violent coronal flares, gore-jewels of salvation.
No one sees who is there —lights on
hovering afield.
Image Credits: Tom D
Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of Duress (Cascade 2022), Rose is a Verb: Neo-Georgics (Slant 2021), Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008) and In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004), winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. Her book of literary criticism, Anglophone Literatures in the Asian Diaspora: Literary Transnationalism and Translingual Migrations, was selected for the Cambria Sinophone World Series (2013). She serves as provost and a professor of English at Wheaton College.