Issue 7

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Poetry

It Is Daylight

I called my house from a pay phone
down the street before I went home.
I needed to check on the empty situation.
It was daylight,
still here.
My shadow looked large and unschooled.
The sidewalk was yellow in the sun.
I was thinking that I wasn't anyone
and that my future would be a trajectory
leading further away.
The lilacs were out. They looked like a detail
from a bucolic story or tableau
where people are naked, eating picnics,
grapes, kissing, and drinking wine
while playing musical instruments. It seems made-up,
but it's not. It must be based on a world
something like the one that's here while I'm walking.
Many houses are abutted by hedges.
I don't like this, but I wouldn't take them away.
The hedges are often surrounded by beds of wood chips.
The sight of them is a silent story about the dead.
I was filled with yearning
to sit against the side of a house
between two hedges.
I don't know how to pray but I would try.
I felt somber and excited, about to go into my house.

Some people come down the street.
They're very dressed up.
I can see them from my bedroom window.
My house is quiet,
as though it isn't mine
but was given to me
by something other than myself.
The dressed up people cross the street
and walk under the lilac trees.
They look very nice and awful. The young woman
wears a peach dress with cream-colored heels.
She's with a young man wearing a dark blue suit
and a turquoise shirt. How unfortunate
that they have to go out in daylight
and see themselves
out among trees, streets, and open sounds.
Walking through my house, I love the doors
best. Waking up the other day, I went downstairs
and banged my face into the door frame
of a closet. It hurt. It was only an accident,
but I ended up in tears.
Now with this bump on my forehead,
I'm grateful.
I wash the dishes, clean the bathroom, vacuum.
Over the course of several days
I feel satisfied that my apologies have run themselves out.
I don't know when it's time to stop
but eventually I do, and I do other things.

Read more in Issue 7

Essay Variations on the Right to Remain Silent : Anne Carson contemplates translation
Focus Barren by Saadat Hasan Manto
Fiction Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes
It Is Daylight
Sail On, My Little Honey Bee
Are You Ready?
A Valentine to Darwin
Lincoln in His Grave
Outnumbered at 0