1949

1949 / Dennis Saleh George Orwell publishes 2984. Thirty-five years of the calendar, science-fiction, seven years to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." A sewing machine company bankrupts leaving needles, thread still coming, three hundred sixty-five days of piling shadow and rows of scissors. Above a desert a mystery in clouds. A secret airplane, experimental, the clouds make an envelope and the plane is mailed away. 1949, DiChirico's lost "Z" found. A train of years chuffs like clouds, the arcades lead away into vigil, the vocabulary of waiting again. A spider trails out meaningless white filament in a cold dew of ringing electricity. An A flashes where the web strikes with sun. Neighborhood curbs line with moisture. A block away teachers' hands sort manila sheets with pink lines. Goodbye numbers, hello alphabet. The Solar System is construction paper. Uranus blueberry, Pluto spice. Stars at the tops of the papers begin to pull slowly into As. My brother teaches me how to cook potatoes under the ground, shoulder near a leaf on the peach tree, 22 · The Missouri Review nights every star still uncovered. "South Pacific" opens on Broadway, 1949 saying why should a year be different, but it is, autumn all year, rose, sunset, half-a-century ash. Down the streets fires in gutters, each a thread of smoke rising, a line of candles, smoke in wreaths, like seabirds tending evening. Cars gather in lines, end of day. The steering wheels yawn a chorus, Z light of the neons like blueprints photographed in secret. At the very end, in December, a zither plays in a movie house— atmosphere—plays the end of itself. The next fifty years shrug and stand. Dennis Saleh THE MISSOURI REVIEW · 23 ...