Summer Office With a Small View of Grand Central
Cold offices stay as you leave them.
Stay square, stay stark
Stay stiff with grey
Language, with grey thoughts all wishing
Otherwheres, with teeth
Slightly bared
Yet the air is bloodless, and sexless
And studded
With the tiptip of typing, the
“Calling for Johnson. Is he in?
We need those documents now. Right now."
Right now
An entire day is unfolding.
Right now
A hard yellow apple of sun
Lays the light down
Slow. Slow slow
Like a woman lays down
Shoulderbone slow. . .
And Hermes is blazing
Over Grand Central Station, he’s
Carved smooth as syrup
But he’s stiller than the stone
He’s made of
I can't hear. I want to hear the rumbling
Of light and knives and the heart's white rocks
And will they hear us,
Those dear dirty gods
While we’re caught
In these cold, clean boxes?
Mara Michael Jebsen is a poet and vocalist raised in Philadelphia and Lome, Togo, West Africa. She holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University, where she also teaches undergraduate essay writing. (marajebsen@yahoo.com)