188 Adsum Do you have, like me, those years-long moments when you are afraid: On your way to me, the train will find no rails, and air will be Heavier than airplanes, or your road will be a trap, your map Will betray you, and your car will choke with gas? No signs on streets, No retreat, no traffic lights, your town will be a desert, no One allowed to say my name, to know my address. Don't you have These impenetrable moments? -- when, too heavy with your want, You can't make a step towards me waiting, with no tracks, for trains. Are you not afraid your language will not have conjunctions for Right directions, grammar to express your reckless urge to go Through the air that will be heavier than airplanes, down the road Wrought in loops and leaps -- no speed limit for thoughts, no needed words, Needled threads across your torn apart vocabulary, no Manual for how to walk towards me, closer in a day With one step, away from your vernacular speech? Are you not Alien on your map, not showing where you are and where I am -- Lost, like me, in Latin, laden, latent underneath my slang?







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IRENE CÆSAR
Confined Verse
Collected Poems

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