orb on a pedestal


in the huge corners of fate:

the pulse, the grave, the afternoon,

me, you,

the falling rate of satisfaction (which is good—

we are anti-productivist),

meditations fighting for air,

desire calculating the objective mementos

of time lost in microclimates, by

me, by you, by poking the fires

of imagined happiness, by distancing ancestral

claims…there in the lap of such vast lacunae

we swallow hard to

guard against the easy streams, the quicksilver

recognitions of self-love,

me and you—are we

deliberately dissonant, or brilliant, glowering

behind the flat plane of the picture of this

object (an orb on a pedestal) that has pulled

tidally upon the liquids of our eyes?

now we are wearing an aura

as tender as rain’s patina on an emerging leaf.

now we are crusted—ruined

by the cloying atmospheres of life according to

me and you. now we are ether.

Gail Wronsky is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Bling & Fringe (The L.A. Poems), coauthored with Molly Bendall, and Blue Shadow Behind Everything Dazzling: Poems from India, both published in 2009. She teaches poetry, critical theory, and women’s writing at LMU Los Angeles, where she is learning horticulture.