INTRODUCTION TO PHENOMENOLOGY
It was the first time
I ever heard my own inner dialogue
I followed the strange river
through the woods
back to its source
no more than a damp patch of earth
on a low hill
When a morgue in Iowa
finds a person in a body bag
gasping for air—
I must’ve passed my koan:
“The moth in the flame swallows the tiger”
& the forensic technician
lets the woman out of her banal chrysalis
so she stands up, stark naked, in the silent room
& suddenly claps her hands together
killing a fly
saying, “Got it”
&
a Chinese surveillance balloon
is spotted in the sky above Montana
MÂYÂ
Incident
on the fiber of my being
She makes a pencil of rays
decided by its azimuth
If your heart should break
(& wind-wrecked webs are gilt with golden light)
you’ll know that it has opened—
something has been freed
Ray Corvi’s work was published in Brushfire (Fall 2022), DASH Literary Journal (05/2022), Evening Street Review (forthcoming 2023), FRiGG Magazine (05/2022), Neologism Poetry Journal (06/2022), OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (Aug/Sept 2021), The Penmen Review (07/2021), The Seattle Star (07/2021), Sage Cigarettes Magazine (10/2022), A Thin Slice of Anxiety (01/2023), and Triggerfish Critical Review (07/2022). He has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, and has worked a number of odd jobs, including driving a yellow cab in New York City.