#every year around this time i reread (some or all of) lynda's collected poems

[razorsadness]

Spell for the Manufacture & Use of a Magic Carpet

When the last commuter trains etch black signatures of departure over tracks and subways glide untroubled through quiet tunnels, find an obscure girl. Let her weave a carpet of white & new wool, the best wool

of the Garment District. Obtain a wand from the Armenian in the hour of the sun when the moon is full & in Capricorn. Go to a park or a rooftop where you'll suffer no disturbance. Spread your carpet facing East & West,

& having drawn a circle to enclose it, hold your wand in the air. Name backward the chain of names from each current of the past into whatever crests foamless toward the future. Invoke the faces abandoned in cloakrooms

of childhood, summoning each discarded voice. Thank each panicked corridor & lucid clinic doorway, blessing the hands that ministered to you for they have carried you to this wild incompletion. Remember them,

shed them in the East & North, to the South & West, raising in turn each of the carpet's corners. Go home. Fold your carpet until you need it. Order your house & remove each dooryard stone.

Wait for a night of full or new moon when open windows free the sleepers' heated breath. On a roof where you'll risk no harm, write with a feather, on a strip of azure parchment, those characters found on page three hundred and seven

in the Dictionary of Angels. Hold the wand in your left hand, the parchment in your right, recite the arcana of angels for each precinct. Thank whatever god you understand, whatever buoys you past

each harbored absence. Ask then to discover the secret thing you seek, gazing out always over the diners & arcades to the cities of New Jersey rising white, small beyond the Palisades.

—Lynda Hull, from Ghost Money