One Million Prayers, Highly Compressed
If you break a prayer wheel,
you’ll find one million prayers, highly compressed:
ancient texts on aged parchment
and singing monks on faded film.
You need not beware the beaded comet
strike, propelled by a prayer’s orbit, burning
a black path toward your knuckles.
But if you wish to fix a prayer wheel,
first, feel your way around silver spirals,
karmic filigree, coral, lapis.
Second, recognize you know nothing
except secondhand knowledge. Hearsay and souvenirs
brought home by well-meaning and beloved retirees;
that is: the divine purpose of a prayer wheel is
to enhance the inscribed praying of past petitioners.
A housecat can rebirth as a human
if you neglect to spin enough prayers.
They say if you die with a hungry cat,
it will eat off your nose. Could you fault it
for wanting you to live on in its living on?
To survive as feed is the highest honor;
Death fertilizes Life
so Life may stave
off
the weeds of death.
If you spin a prayer wheel, watch
carefully as the ouroboros of life
and death swirls before you, eternal
and unbroken.
Sara Santistevan is an emerging Latina poet. She was the recipient of the 2021 Kresge College Reyna Grande Scholarship, which gave her the resources to finish her chapbook, The Root From Which Freedom Blossoms (forthcoming with Fauxmoir). She has work published or forthcoming in Shō Poetry Journal, Akéwì Magazine, F(r)iction, and elsewhere. In both her artistic and editorial work, Sara aims to build bridges between historical and personal narratives and amplify diverse voices in literature.
The Marbled Sigh 