Suzanne Wise

issue 14 · Fall 2014

I am inside your wedge-shaped foyer. Listen. Cars zim-zooming through the artery of non-mind. Wake up. To what? To too too. The fourth dimension of over-thinking. What else is there to do but get past highways splitting and twining, the bridge leaping up, the cupcake shop, warehouses turned into condos. Red sandals I wanted as necessary to my restoration. A sublime uselessness, you may be deciding as you watch us drift. You let the sky break in but you hide the temple. You decorate the park with barricades. You crumble the school. You eclipser. You spit me out. You turn me about. You drag me down the alley of your diorama.

We linger over some picturesque commercialism. People come to visit the sandwich seller; they sit on plastic crates beside the sandwich cart and the sandwich seller yells to them in a friendly way as if they are far off and he wants them to come closer. It is no wonder. On this street the buildings are backdrop to landmarks. On this street people walk slow as if there is no end to the universe.

When no one is around I say hello to you aloud. I decide you are the air shaft. Or a flashing plug-in skyline. Or the Great Nebulousness hovering over the city limits. I don’t know you, I say to the words chasing your morphing forms. But it is not useless to compose fables. I hold tight to my fear of the possible. The empty unit beside this one. The opening out of the corridor. The distant points of light circling me when I spin.