Monumental
Monika Zobel
Excerpted from On the Corner of Guilt and Ash, Anomalous Press Chapbook Contest Notable
click here to read about the full project
is the writing in foreign
letters. In a city that carves
directions to our dreams
on headstones, subways
erase shadows like folded
hands on tables. Patched
walls catch colds that last
a century, while elevators
witness every fall, every
rise with closed doors.
What did you do? You plucked
shadows and reinvented
the history of bodies. We leave
windows open as if body heat
could lock all our losses
in a single touch. You confess:
the corners of your mouth
were drawn for speaking.
But I could have sworn
that the words you spoke
were full of clay and grapes—
pockets stuffed with grief.
Where did you go? You were homeless.
Alphabets blossomed on your toenails.
Monika Zobel's poems and translations have been published or are forthcoming in Redivider, DIAGRAM, Beloit Poetry Journal, Mid-American Review, Drunken Boat, Guernica Magazine, West Branch, Best New Poets 2010, and elsewhere. A Pushcart nominee, senior editor at The California Journal of Poetics, and Fulbright alumna, Monika lives in Vienna, Austria.
