Nothing Is the Thin Wall
- Nothing Is the Thin Wall
Nothing is the thin wall of glass (as thin as skin)just over there. I think if I look at that woman’s shoes,coated in hardened mud—and if I calculatethe weight that this playground supports right now,all the dirt, dogs, benches, swing sets, and if I countfrom memory the freckles on my mother’s arms and face—I might forget about the one who wakes me by screechinginto my brain that Nothing grabs us all, good or bad, boy,girl popular, un-, YOU—I also think that my abilityto become misplaced, to take a few steps away and find myselfin someone’s poppy garden, or in the frozen aisle at the market,or hovering at the ceiling of my sister’s bedroom in Thomastonlooking down at her asleep—lost, upside down, turned-around-unable-to-navigate-lost—so far might just . . . I believe . . . have kept mefrom the thin glass wall just over there—I know exactly where it is. [End Page 339]
Martha Rhodes is the author of four poetry collections: The Beds (Autumn House, 2012), Mother Quiet (University of Nebraska Press, 2004), Perfect Disappearance (New Issues, 2000), and At the Gate (Provincetown Arts, 1995). She teaches in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and at Sarah Lawrence College. A resident of New York City, she is director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry in New Hampshire and director of Four Way Books.
