"Street Art - Providence, RI" by Olivier Schopfer
Dispatches from a Distant Land by Alison Thumel
I’ll tell you a story about the world and how it’s not so bad
in spite of all the reports.
I’ll choose careful words, starting with before the dawn of time,
because many stories start this way
and because I don’t want it to have a beginning and an end.
That means hoping
something will come after, forgetting the middle parts
completely. The moment after
you wake and hear the news that a man killed so many
last night like fish
turning circles in a barrel. Don’t start like the broadcaster,
repeating again and again:
how beautiful the scales were as they caught the light.
Start with,
I hear they can 3D print just about anything these days,
even a new heart,
a whole new person to replace the one you were before.
The one you lost.
Don’t start the story like a woman on a gurney, instructed
to count backward
from 100. This is to say, don’t start what you can’t finish.
99, 98, 97… Waking,
the woman won’t remember the last number she spoke,
but she will remember
a light. I’ve heard that doctors call this state between
as it is just an interlude
in the story. As a child I learned not to pick anything up
since I’d only put it down
at some later date. Now, my arm is tired from the thought
of all this picking up
and putting down, sipping hope from small cups
trying to remember
the shape of a piece of ice before the melting started.
Don’t start with once.
Start with, in a land far, far away people live forever.
I want to hope,
but how can I when the reef is washing up, round
and wet like a small universe?
Start with, they’ve found other wet planets. Dispatches
and reports of life.
Start with, the miners survived two months underground,
no light or air,
birthed from the dirt like foals, blind with wet, wobbly legs.
When I wake screaming,
don’t start. Look at my mouth moving hollow like:
I can’t shake
myself out of this and say that all of it is real, even
the bad dreams
but also the good. Get me a sip of water and my shoes.
Lead me gently
outside to lug the coral, all brain, nearly breathing,
from beach to shallows
in my hands. Don’t start without an ending. Elsewhere,
people are sinking ships
to make reefs, as if it were possible to replace with metal
what was once muscle and bone.
in spite of all the reports.
I’ll choose careful words, starting with before the dawn of time,
because many stories start this way
and because I don’t want it to have a beginning and an end.
That means hoping
something will come after, forgetting the middle parts
completely. The moment after
you wake and hear the news that a man killed so many
last night like fish
turning circles in a barrel. Don’t start like the broadcaster,
repeating again and again:
how beautiful the scales were as they caught the light.
Start with,
I hear they can 3D print just about anything these days,
even a new heart,
a whole new person to replace the one you were before.
The one you lost.
Don’t start the story like a woman on a gurney, instructed
to count backward
from 100. This is to say, don’t start what you can’t finish.
99, 98, 97… Waking,
the woman won’t remember the last number she spoke,
but she will remember
a light. I’ve heard that doctors call this state between
as it is just an interlude
in the story. As a child I learned not to pick anything up
since I’d only put it down
at some later date. Now, my arm is tired from the thought
of all this picking up
and putting down, sipping hope from small cups
trying to remember
the shape of a piece of ice before the melting started.
Don’t start with once.
Start with, in a land far, far away people live forever.
I want to hope,
but how can I when the reef is washing up, round
and wet like a small universe?
Start with, they’ve found other wet planets. Dispatches
and reports of life.
Start with, the miners survived two months underground,
no light or air,
birthed from the dirt like foals, blind with wet, wobbly legs.
When I wake screaming,
don’t start. Look at my mouth moving hollow like:
I can’t shake
myself out of this and say that all of it is real, even
the bad dreams
but also the good. Get me a sip of water and my shoes.
Lead me gently
outside to lug the coral, all brain, nearly breathing,
from beach to shallows
in my hands. Don’t start without an ending. Elsewhere,
people are sinking ships
to make reefs, as if it were possible to replace with metal
what was once muscle and bone.
Alison Thumel lives and writes in Chicago. Her poems have recently appeared in Hobart, Banshee, and DIAGRAM, among others. Her first chapbook won Salt Hill's Dead Lake Chapbook Contest and will be published in early 2017.
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions: http://olivierschopferracontelesmots.blog.24heures.ch/
