Xenolith

a poem by Nathaniel Youmans

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A fragment surrounded by foreign material. An isolated inclusion of rock. As if to make an island nation of
everything that at times finds itself surrounded by strange terrain. Terrain the visible architecture of doubt.
The eroding expression of what is buried and what is buried an expression of what is secret what is intimate
and unapproachable like a mind like a poem like its           numinous artifacts of pressure.           The mind a
poem of artifacts quickening turns luminous in the buried expression of terrain secret against the termination
of analysis. The poem an axis           the mind’s terrain grows                to coil another ouroboran origin upon
in order to perform time more truthfully for & in spite of & against itself. The underlying question being how
to map a world              before you actually exist            in its narrative here pushing against its surface
tension a false summit of scattered light and proteins in the vastness chewing its own tail on the ripples at the
edge of this bright black molting ocean. To map a world before you begin you begin with a quickening
intrusion in the bestiary of basalt. Isolated narrative sudden and prodigious. The map the direction and the
secret. The position the isolation surrounding you with all you have inherited.