Icon/Coin

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss

we have so much trouble 
& all this:  


the fact of cell, lineament, eyelash 
iris lit 
with recognition           you:             


windowing open inner rooms 
that have become fluent
with color & glass


your mountain architecture
imports a presence

your torso of wheat 
budding the earliest stars

where have you walked            

your horizon scar     your face & burning core
an icon of the unnamable one  

the way a koan is an oak

/

shuddering & wild       hallelujahs 
circumscribed by markets        

domesticated & servile
as if the god dreamed 
an american dream

may our currency 
be strong & our empire 

invisible

how easy          how embedded the slip
dominus  :   domicile  :   dominion

pressing us 
into coin 
into the equation of blood
& treasure

/
for centuries people were buried
with money      the emperor’s face
dates the remains         the realm         the life
 

every face is a microcosm                    Stranger,          

I love my empire I hate

I am cleaved / cleaving                                    

born in two houses that reassemble
            each other, each dreaming 
its own mastery

/
treasuries of wild mint
grow in the alleys

the clouds, migrant     the god
a prism              

/

I tie colored strips of cloth
to branches      purple, hemoglobin, ochre

people wash ashore
disappear into prisons & detentions

the tree bears questions
desperation’s visible spectrum

do I know your face
when I see it    do I need it

to be my own

how far 
has the fact of you walked


with your everlasting
carnation         your communion 

your dress of windows             
rendering sun

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss grew up in Arkansas, received her PhD in English from the University of Iowa, and now lives and writes in Iowa City. Her work has appeared in Brink, Slice, Zone 3, The Offing, Pangyrus, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2021 Levis Prize from Four Way Books for her manuscript A Koan/An Oak, and a chapbook of poems and visual art made in collaboration with Giselle Simón is forthcoming from PromptPress. She currently serves on the advisory council of Iowa City Poetry and as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.