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Timothy Ree

I Say Now These Are The Soul

How the hell it got here, in the apartment, behind
             this ugly couch we're so tired of looking at—the leg. 

                                       •	

Imagine the rest of it, the rest of them	naked, bald—
             mannequins in the room, seated by old typewriters, 
clicking word by slow word,	late into the night. 

                                       •	

Once, in a show on TV—up past midnight when I had 
             the chance—the horror wasn't the dark curly wig, 
but the slow strange crawl across the kitchen floor. 

                                       •	

How parts of us move, grow, in spite of us detach—
              like mercy, or the idea of mercy, withheld from those 
who need it most. 

                                       •	

A kaleidoscope the size of a finger, forgotten toy—
             looking through it to blood cells, to flowers on fire, 
the inner dome of a cathedral, to stars. 

                                       •	

All I see now is a landscape of bone, as in Where, where
              were you pointing, abba? Where exactly? 

                                       •	

My favorite blue yo-yo, O the moves I'd master:
             the loop-the-loop, the sleeper—the dreamer become
a dog on a leash, become a baby in a cradle, rocking— 

                                       •	

The flying saucer. Or the man on a flying trapeze,	
             had I practiced enough, had we not outgrown wonder—
the Eiffel Tower made of string. 

                                       •	

Remember grinning, first time flipping through the legend,
             I whispered No, a headless horse—or a horse with a missing leg. 

                                       •	

In The Seventh Seal, how the knight stares at his hand,
             same hand with which he has, for now, evaded Death—
at chess, what else?— 

                                       •	

That he can move it, that he can move it at will—
             miracle enough. 

                                       •	

We left it for you—the leg by the curb. We slipped it 
             between two garbage bags. 

 

Timothy Ree lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he teaches literature and writing at a public high school. He holds a BA in English from Wheaton College (IL) and an M.Div from Yale University, and is currently at work on his first manuscript.

 

See full list of 2015 Emerging Poets Fellows