A Poem by Austin Allen

Dissent at the Temple of Gemini

None of us loves the Leader all that much,
although, of course, we keep this to ourselves
whenever Sphere and Azure are around.
Azure might look the other way, but Sphere
(always with that damn tablet in his garment)
would have you written up before first light
and E-5’d straight into the Outer Zone.
True, that’s his role, but it’s the way he plays it—
stone-eyed and smug, as if the previous Leader
hadn’t reshaped our hearts, as if her teachings
hadn’t compelled our spirits toward Resorption…
You’d think the fourteenth edict had been scribbled
by some lost Zonian on a weekend bender
for all the “inner warmth” he shows.
Meanwhile,
the fledgling Leader tries his best, we think,
but gets a little bogged down in logistics.
Of course, there must be council meetings, chants,
twice-daily cleansings, managed interactions
with staff at what the Zonians call the drugstore
(on top of dues collection and recruitment)—
yet, as the previous Leader clearly saw,
outward procedure must not be confused
with inner warmth, still less with Energy
itself. “Beware lest ritual become
the tent and not the entrance to the tent:
better to camp out under open sky.”
Third edict, second verse. What more to say?
But since the council takes no feedback now,
I write these notes and squirrel them away.

*

I dream that she’ll return the way she came:
step from the shimmering desert in a green
loose-fitting gown, her raiment as she called it,
tied with a silver cord. Take off her shades.
Ask if I’d like to help her change a tire.
That’s where she plucked me from—a service station
in the red hills northwest of Santa Fe.
Wasted and tripping midway through my shift,
I mumbled, Yes, ma’am, fumbled through the job…
Then suddenly my face was in her hands.
Her green eyes seized on mine. She seemed at least
thirty years older, but her stare gave off
the strangest teasing gleam. “This isn’t you,”
she whispered joyfully. “You are not this.”
All I could stammer was, “How did you know?”
“Hop in,” she said. “Why say when you can show?”

*

She got me clean. She put me up rent-free
in the Initiates’ cabin, asking only
that I attend her daily class and wear
the Temple garment, simple, cool, and loose.
She taught me literature, gave me thick
printouts of classic works—her Edicts, yes,
but also scattered verses she’d composed
in mystic trances: odes to wind and birds,
a prophecy involving icy caves
and darkened seas. (That one she said she’d dreamed.)
Shivering through withdrawal, I imprinted
all seven hundred edicts on my brain
so fast, she hinted I might someday make
council material. Me, the screw-up kid
who’d fixed her car a month ago...
All that
was blurry history, though—I’d need some way
to pay my dues. She put me in Recruiting.
Soon I’d led four young Zonians to our camp.
Her smiles for me grew almost molten, now,
with inner warmth—even, sometimes, I swear,
pure Energy. At last she touched my brow
and, once I’d fasted for a night and day,
had Sphere escort me to her sanctuary.

*

Steep trails, coyotes whining... By a grove
of desert willow stood a large bell tent.
Candlelight flared inside it. Sphere withdrew,
bowing, I thought, a little peevishly.

She sat enthroned in pillows, silver hair
tinged with the fire-glow, high mattress piled
with afghans, saddle blankets, downy quilts.
She’d changed her raiment to a sheer silk robe,
still green, still knotted with the silver cord.
Sinuous music interspersed with chants
rose from an unseen source. Off to my left
stretched a low table set with beadwork, brass,
malachite, censers, and a single goblet
filled to the crystal brim. At her command,
I sipped a bitter liquid whose effects,
before too long, reminded me of shrooming...

Next she directed me to shed my garment
and strike, like chimes, her three brass singing bowls:
one mallet-tap to each, then, as their songs
rolled forth, a gentle wanding of the rims.
I did as told. Shook as if struck myself.
That tingling sheen of sound wavering among
the steadier knells ... the low smolder of sage ...
“Approach.” I sat beside her, saw the cord
unfastened now, her long legs now uncrossed.

Cupping my ear, she whispered: “I am NAWA,
the New Arcadian World Architect.
Keeper of mysteries, builder of the realm
in which all Energy will soon converge.
I’ve shed my earthly alias, Martina,
and will retain this name until Resorption.
Never pronounce it in the others’ presence.
Still call me Leader everywhere but here”—
she tapped the tent—“and here”—she tapped my temple.
Now that you know, you may bestow your praise.”

My hands were clammy and my throat was dry.
A flock of yucca flowers like luna moths
whirled through the tent, then vanished at a blink.
She shed the green robe with a silky shrug.
Although the bowls were still, I heard or felt
a one-note, overwhelming, bell-clear song
toll in my skull. What else to do? I knelt.

So I addressed me to my Leader (praise),
she drew me in and bowed me to her (praise),
indulged my wordless utterances (praise),
beckoned me back onto the bedclothes (praise),
melded our spirits on that altar (praise),
received my Energy and essence (praise),
as in a preview of Resorption. (Praise.)

I woke up on the pillows, dazed and parched.
She brought me yucca stems to break my fast
and water in a cold brass singing bowl.

*

That was the first of thirty summonses.
Two nights a week, Sphere led me to her tent,
then slank off griping in the desert wind.

Summer with her was all I never had
of college, seminary, anything.
The tent flap closed. The candles waved their flames.
I struck the brass bowls like a classroom bell
and played the fresh Initiate each night.
Toward dawn, she taught about the constellations:
how Gemini is central and the rest
revolve around it, some with different names
than what you learn in horoscopes or high school.
She showed me how good writing flows like breathing
and can be measured out in counts of ten.
Some of her lessons I don’t dare write down,
even on paper I intend to burn.
I felt imagination change its raiment.
I saw reality take off its robe.

Autumn crept in. One morning she was missing.
Then, for a while, she came and (mostly) went.
Finally the council met without her—took
no questions afterward. As I swept up,
the council chair, her second-in-command
and “spiritual twin,” leaned toward a colleague
and hissed ovarian. They saw me, frowned,
ducked out the door...

Her presence only shrank
further from there—her Energy, her body.
Her sanctuary banished me as simply
as canvas fluttering shut. Her candles winked
in dreams. The council chair convened a meeting
in the last week of April, at first light,
to tell the Temple she’d achieved Resorption
and would prepare our way. His hair lay slicked
across his gray scalp and his smile was thin.
Unanimously, the council named him Leader.
No questions afterward.

He tries his best,
we think, but takes a different view of melding:
summons young women, mostly, to his tent.
Sphere leads them off at night, sometimes in pairs,
and then it’s weeks before they’ll meet your eyes.
Our chants are less euphoric now, our cleansings
more fastidious. The Leader adds
new rifles to his private stash—we hear
talk of his strained relations with the state.

He says Resorption doesn’t have to wait:
we can induce it, and the time is near.

*

Last week, at what the Zonians call the drugstore
(my mind still struggles with the word mind-market),
I almost walked right into Trapezoid,
who’d been E-5’d for insubordination.

“Oh, shit!” he greeted me. “How are you, brother?
They kick your ass out, too?” He saw my garment.
“Sorry. You’ll get there, though. My real name’s Ray—
they ever tell you that? Whoa, you all right?
Martina got you tripping balls out there?
Listen, my friend who studied at Southwestern
told me she used to teach—whoa, whoa, hold up!
Come on, you’ve got to know by now—” Already
I’d started off across the glaring asphalt,
fleeing toward Azure, who was keeping watch.

A sign, I guess: of change? The need for change?
I’ve gone through all the edicts one by one.
The seven hundredth clearly stipulates
that the original Leader “must be present
when we embark upon our great Resorption”—
yet her replacement urges us to trust
that “since she’s always present in some sense,”
the embarkation ritual can proceed.
He asks too much. The Edicts can’t become
that kind of pact. One verse seems to allow
high-ranking councilors to curb his power:
I could approach them with a formal plea,
tell the Recruiting team to back me up...
That might get all of us E-5’d. (Or worse.)
I could put in a bid to join the council,
but the ascension process takes a year.
Sometimes I dream of calling up a Zonian—
my uncle, maybe—but I have no phone.
Then I recall the verse she’d chant aloud,
stirring the candle-flames inside her tent:
“The Edicts are the fever and the cure,
the binding cord and cry of liberation.”
The text will guide the form of my dissent.
Now in the private hour before first light,
alert and shivering, I fill this page,
wrestle my thoughts beneath the last clear stars,
and feel the nearness of a revelation.

Austin Allen is the author of The Travels of Blad J. Garamond (Measure Press) and Pleasures of the Game (Waywiser Books), winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of the Virgin Islands.