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Taije Silverman: Itinerant

March 30, 2013 by PBQ

                                    Thus spoke Proteus, and I was broken hearted as I heard him.            
                                                                                --The Odyssey
 
Between the airport and this latest
of my half-inhabited cities, a dead stretch
of smokestacks burns tanks full of fuel,
dredged up out of disappeared sea beds.
A bald man as dark as the dark in a closet
sells giant pink bears under tarp
at the edge of a parking lot.  His head’s
a tethered planet.  Between it
and the apartment where my parents’
antique table waits for the next unknown city
is the silence in this taxi, the Where are you from
of tree shadows on brownstones.
I recognize them from dreams.  Raindrops
on windshields: I recognize you.  Who
left the son of a sea god in charge of answering
all our questions, and only if we hold him
with both hands? He takes the shape
of taped plastic curtains that keep families
a secret on streets we drive down
just this once. He takes every shape.
And when we catch him all our questions
sieve to one: How to get home?
In my hands he turns to sea foam and cold
mornings.  13th and Race, a woman’s toothed voice
breaks into the taxi’s static, Number Eight.
Someone must be leaving or returning again,
shore like the glint of an insect wing
in the distance.  Are ten years a long time?
I asked an 80 year-old man in a hotel this morning.
Yes, he said, as if the answer had been obvious.
Odysseus would have been happy enough
to stay with Calypso, or on an island
eating petals of forgetfulness.
The man driving this taxi is the rosy dawn.
The well-cloaked god.  The twelve lost ships.
The man driving this taxi is from Somalia
and his children are fast asleep there.
In the passenger seat, a half-pint of milk
sloshes on its side; in the broken open
glove compartment, a bottle of hot sauce
is almost empty. What’s recognized
slides through our strangers’ goodbyes
onto the black leather of the taxi’s back seat.
Where are you from becomes a rock
in a pocket, as easy to keep as framed pictures.
In a year I won’t even have lived here.

Filed Under: Contributors 86, Issue 86, Poetry, Poetry 86 Tagged With: Contributors 86, Poetry, Poetry 86, Taije Silverman

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