A Large Mirror Unloaded From a Truck in the Sun
by Stefania Heim
Participation relegated to sleeping near
the open window. My great failure
has always been not imagining the future
but in managing myself. Your thumbprint, please,
before we launch the new rhetoric. I know
when I grovel I am plain. I’ve actually had a dream
about this building, and it feels soon enough to me now.
For all the reasons we are short of breath, approximate.
Passion clusters as though circumstance. A terrible
child, I grow apart. According to the original
rules, burn everything. Who could have anticipated
what we are becoming—in constraint, in circumspection.
I’ll think of some experiment to move us,
focusing on the lenses learned.
So Torn by My Tides
So torn by my tides, I do not I can read them.
Hour book, our book. “H” in Italian is a tool, not a sound. My mother slips the “h” in only where it doesn’t belong. Our book, our book. How events just accumulate in time. Who will we lose in the duration of this writing. The promise of future children names for our beloved dead. Whispered at caskets. An hour dead. How many hours.
In our village the streets empty at appointed times. If life were a time-lapse video, lingering would be more visible than slipping away. Invisible motions the more pronounced. Once I stood akimbo, 8PM mid-street, waiting for everyone to go. I am astonished, in memory, by the boldness of it. Did everyone go?
How many ours.
Fourteen Lines 