Issue 7

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Poetry

Outnumbered at 0
by Mary Jo Bang

The silent south, the workers quiet.
Listen. The pictured environment: An anchor tattoo
In amber, and a cold face like an equally icy chandelier at the top

Of the cage. It's April again. It's October. That's what I said.
It's over, like a ghost in the going to go, Okay, here's the door. See
The trim around the rectangle. Let's walk around,

Get closer to the center. Come over here, sister. Line up
For the photo. It's August. You have on sunglasses. It's February.
It's snowing. I know it keeps changing. You're wearing a jacket.

You're going, Okay, here's the door. See the trim
Around the rectangle. Walking around getting closer to the center.
No rain and yet you're dead center of an eddy.

Listen: We interfere with our own wrath
From the completely unknown inside of a cardboard horse.
I.e., Objectivity is overestimated.

Mary Jo Bang won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her most recent book, Elegy (Graywolf). Her sixth collection, The Bride of E, is forthcoming from Graywolf in fall 2009. She is working on a translation of The Inferno.

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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
Poetry Outnumbered at 0 by Mary Jo Bang