Excerpts from Letters to Distant Cities

She dreams
of a movie theater during a blackout.

A far away village under snow.
A nursery at night.
Ice cream in winter.

A daisy in drought.
A sugar cube in rain.

Her late truth
comes
for her dreams
she grows
copper roots
ghostly flowers.

She'd save
tarred puppies,

write letters to distant cities,
run ahead, keep her eyes peeled for them,

whisper to every tree, every shadow
along the sidewalks, along the streets,

try to collect the scattered stars

every time her head bumped into the Milky Way.

The sea floated up the rivers
into the sky.

Something she thought eternal,
something like childhood,
was gone.

It's not mine this deep red shadow

It's not me this cloud I disown

I glide with the weightlessness of the dispossessed
to the bottom I can't find for the life of me

I crossed the spot where I'm seen long ago
honing the cloud-likeness further

to the point where the swinging branch
the sweat-drenched horse stop all of a sudden—

at
long
last
friendship
at
long
last
to
the
one
bliss
is
it



With the participation of:
Mustafa Ziyalan,
Shara Worden,
Alex Venguer,
Rob Moose,
Adam Frint, and
Jamie Ansley.


Return to Letters to Distant Cities I Carousel