Your number’s up. Cliff edge
is a window-ledge, twelfth floor
New Courts Building, Essex
County. Below, the snow’s
been four feet deep for weeks.
Cops patrol and we’re locked in
as if by serving time
we would develop empathy.
Clouds sweet as cream drift
across the skies where they are free.
Twelve-eighteen’s my new I.D., hotel room, flight number, war lottery.
ii.
After the change of government begin with the maps, newly revised.
Ignore the stars. They will not be there when you need them.
You’re in altered relation
to the spray of light on dark. Now
you see the galaxy edge-on, spinning all the way toward the beginning.
Your compass says south is a range of mountains with a glacier whose flow’s
shape is music you know but can’t sing; you are west
of fields of purple flowers and east of a salt sea. Where are you? Why have they left you here? What is your task? What will you devote yourself to?
© Deena Linett