Permeance
Shana Wolstein
Damien Hirst's “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind
of Someone Living, 1991” and Slaughterhouse Five
I'm unstuck in time.
It's May: I'm moving away,
I'm visiting New York:
it's January. You float bird-like in your glass
house. I'm reading this poem months from now,
October, wondering if you are still
here in the future, in the past.
Old ghoul, lost in this moment, this fragment
of us. The children run in to point and scream, in between laughs. I wonder
what you remember—in death, who you are.
The impossibility of your death, the callous lack
of time. We stand together; I am on a plane—gone,
lost in a battle, bereft of your flight:
your toothless hanging mouth a silent howl.
Shana Wolstein's poems have been published or are forthcoming in The New Verse News, La Fovea, Anomalous, and Third Coast Magazine. Awarded The Herb Scott Award for Excellence in Poetry, she also received her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. While at Western Michigan University she has held positions as Assistant Poetry Editor and Layout Editor at Third Coast Magazine as well as Publications Intern and Copy and Layout Editor at New Issues Press. She currently lives in Kalamazoo with her boyfriend and two cats and blogs regularly at theredspeechballoon.wordpress.com.
