SurVision Magazine

The Scholars of the Sun


The first students of light were a curious bunch: they waited for Zeus's epiphanies and insisted magnets had souls. But mostly the light fell back on them as they peered at the skies and complained the sun was plagiarizing itself. Over the next 500 years the sun rose and set thousands of times. Each morning the goddess of dawn was thanked, and a path was cleared in the air to let images pass. All the space between the stars and Cleveland, Ohio was paved to make way for illuminations. Dust motes floated in the beams – the ancient sutras proclaimed the rays the same as heat. The dualists saw light entwined with darkness and, therefore, was not a proper thing to be studied on its own. So it wandered and touched off human understanding where it could, and where it could not hatred and stupidity established their domain. The demands of the generals warned in the dark. The famous moralists ministered to their flock. The tortured pleas of those who served the Pentagon remained trapped until the origamists unfolded the many ways that rays bounced off of objects and inspired the devout. Slowly, the masses began to appreciate the holy argument of the light. They kissed its hem. They fondled the beaded handiwork on the water's surface. They marveled at the luxurious fit. Each one began to praise the paradise they lived in, lit by some mysterious presence that both gave hope and shamed them. At dawn, at sunset, in the gloaming, after lux and lumen, they inhaled the light and became the scholars of the sun.





The Day of the Shooting Star


The day of the shooting star made us buy shit we didn't need
for the home of nowhere humans, the nightmare of the big room

where we crushed substandard food and coughed up blood
part of the veil of spectacles that lit up the dirt in our nerves

the one with ADD leaned forward with a purpose equal to an educator
who is mindful of the bastard sounds of saxophones on the public stairs

and the black angel breathing a distraction for opium addicts
confined to a garbage bag that holds the truth tucked in cannonball position

air pollution interrupts deep storms and tough love meets
pesticides, artificial flavors, and African eyes in winter

the aroma of radio in the air near the chandelier of Nazareth
dances the playground planted in the blue wind of the bullfighter sky

as human as flags conjuring amnesia, as slippery as sheets with wits
the problem child tries to live right in American pajamas

Rejoice! the sweet children of the know nothings find their heroes
during meditation footage and the improvements to the peace dances

oversized drums beat in the internet cafes to signal a high speed chase
through a concrete Vietnam and the finish line on a pedestal in Mecca

there our forefathers trapped compassion and replaced it with portraits of power
their eyes on a hopeful medusa with her compelling red parts – still swelling





Tim Kahl currently teaches at California State University, Sacramento. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Drunken Boat, Mad Hatters' Review, Indiana Review, Metazen, Ninth Letter, Sein und Werden, Notre Dame Review, The Really System, Konundrum Engine Literary Magazine, The Journal, The Volta, Parthenon West Review, and Caliban. His collections include The String of Islands (Dink Press, 2015).