It was the year of the mental wipers and the invisible architecture.
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I asked the street scientist, for the design of behavioral etiquette; and nocturnal heat, for the price of discovery and hope. He thought in such a stripped-down nothing, that I felt tinkered with and plain-slighted.
That year, I held a contest of rituals, but everyone resisted. The rebels classified the questioners. My wolf ran from my side. [He is such an improved hope]
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In the year of the enchantments, a passage opened between sky and night, Circadian, cyclical and feral. I was a sucked-out bone. But, the moon was star-struck. Eclipsed. I was in orbit; earth-bound; electro-feeling.
A burst.
A flame
A tearing at the darkness and the night bent back, withdrawn.
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Instantly, I knew the mechanical bluebird from the headbird of dreams
The feltbook from the metalback.
The electroduck from the yellow-scented.
It was the year of the violets and the pretending and I pretended the drift was nocturnal and the best possible day was yet to come.
--Leah Umansky
Leah Umansky is a poet in NYC. Her Mad Men-inspired chapbook, Don Dreams and I Dream was published by Kattywompus Press in 2014. She is host/curator of the COUPLET Reading Series and is presently at work on her third book of poems.
(Some of the poem was appropriated from ideas in this book review. Hanna Roison's book review on 4.12.15 )
