everybody go home now everybody step out we
want the real world to look like it’s blinking I
can’t make it happen alone this woman will help
she’s in a green shirt against the green leaves and
then the green leaves are white siding everybody
get on the automatic sidewalk now we are relatively
still we want the brief world to look like it’s
passing it is but it’s so hard to know it now a
yellow van has arrived we have so much to work
with so much to arrange like rocks and like all
the new widows I understand two categories one
of objects the other of force we want the wind
to come in and erase things against what
would we look like ourselves if we stick our heads
through these holes then you are a shellfish and I
am a pun and we are out three or four bucks
hey everyone I will pay you back just as soon
as we all make a fist I mean one fist we want it
to last
Yearbook
one time this actual moon was trying to arrest me I
was like I don’t even know what I did wrong has
the whole world gone away why didn’t anyone tell
me never much good at escape I thought instead
complete surrender dropped every weapon I
could not have had was like listen you slice of
the future you can cry but you can’t make me
change
Heather Christle is the author of What Is Amazing (Wesleyan University Press, 2012), The Difficult Farm (Octopus Books, 2009), and The Trees The Trees (Octopus Books, 2011), which won the 2012 Believer Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in publications including Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. She teaches poetry at Sarah Lawrence College.
