Portrait of the Artist as a God

by Yee Heng Yeh

Thread—

In the beginning there was a colour

coaxed out of the emptiness.

Across this world I drew a line

and it became the horizon

and what was above became sky

and what was below became sea.

I spun white mist into a spool

and threaded it through a needle

that pierces the fabric of this dimension.

Then I stitched you into being, O dragon,

pinned you down at a million points

upon the blue air.

I made you so thin

you could live upon a boundary—

there you hover between

to be and not to be,

between motion and stillness,

quantum energy drifting into

then out of the frame,

depending on who is looking

and who is not.