The Nature of Objects
By Anna K. Scotti
There was a time traveler who moved
very slowly through time, and in just one direction,
in halting jerks, made baffled and headachy by dials
to pushbuttons, the dog's grey muzzle, a cracked lipstick,
her daughter's Easter shoes: first stuffed with paper,
then too tight, then tucked neatly in a carton
marked cheerlessly, Goodwill. Stumbling left,
then right, as if her limbs had grown too heavy,
or else too light, she ended staring at the window,
as the dirty river flowed, or flows, beneath the overpass
then swelled, overran, and dried again. Leaves flamed,
dried, dropped, the car died—the dog, too—while the daughter,
grown large as if by potion, telescoping distant
and close again, fled, came home, and finally shot
away, a comet trailing books, socks, blocks, outgrown skirts
and scratched CDs, a plastic cow, a spaceship.
And the traveler moved very slowly through time,
as if baffled by a bent enamel dish
that once held the dog's water, a cracked flowerpot,
by the layer of dust that conceals and reveals
the nature of objects, the crush of gravity, the thinness
of our atmosphere, the proximity of the sun.
Reprinted by permission from Bewildered by All This Broken Sky (Lightscatter Press, forthcoming 2021)
Source: https://www.lightscatterpress.org/
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