Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

Tony Iantosca
PRAISE BE
the night becomes a hologram through which nothing appears coherent not even the idea
at 9:26 p.m. fall empties its pockets and a pile of postcards from beaches carrying
summer air falls in place of leaves. left to shuffle through them and recognize no one,
these examples from another time collide like shopping carts slamming into billboards
with wanting to transfer feeling from its inner locus to the popping sound and smoke
faint in the sky after fireworks in the cold. if there were time before the show for
another question to be resolved by just sitting before the drafty light coming in the city
window. take a moment and regard the mind‘s dappled shadows, the blank spaces
that make thinking bear the weight of some microscopic ribbon from one memory‘s
embedded desire to the next. would anyone believe that could be praise. another kind
of worship of where the person began as the heater comes on. a breath like that cannot
be feigned as in some in-flight movie knowing that in the kitchen a stove-flame‘s
purchase on air is not through. below the window it‘s a cannot canyon filling with
songs known for their anti-aging properties. the end of my eyelash touches
the back of my arm.
52