To try drowning out the businessmen on my right:
String Quartet, Romantic.
I am in a red—white!—dress.
I am four feet wide at the base, all that crinoline. I am
walking tall with the world’s first dictionary on my head
and its weight does not
crack my neck—no, I am opening Infinite Jest—no,
I am lying flat on a hill named Maria and I say
hello Maria
I say
beautiful grass
I define beautiful
from the thick, yellowed page (No. 2617).
I am not me.
I say
hello star, light years away from
me,
and I reach out to touch it and I do.
It is blushing, it is soft, it feels like a muscle pulsing,
it feels like the footsteps of a beetle, it bursts
and covers me in antigravity.
***
Laurin Becker Macios was born in Miami, FL and moved from state to state and
between countries before landing in New England. She has just wrapped up her
MFA in Poetry at the University of New Hampshire and is working for Mass
Poetry, an organization supporting poets and poetry in Massachusetts. She lives
in Cambridge, MA with her husband.
