Reading Eat Stop Eat Under the Joshua Tree
BY NICHOLAS YINGLING
Let the desert in. Fill yourself
and narrow
like the hourglass to the grain:
amaranth, farro, spelt.
If you must eat, eat
the ancients. If you must break
fast, break
saṃsāra and give
notice to the world: Dear Future,
we can go without
you. The mind
that thinks with meat
thinks it’s meat.
Let your stomach do the work:
breathe. That pressure
in your chest
drops, your eyes sinking
inward like shadows on a mountain
on the clearest of days.
Don’t the stars,
for all their mass, leave you
crumbs of light?
In a dream nothing can be read.
If you must
wake, wake
blank and centered as the page—
your edges so fine
you could open a finger.
