New Year's Eve, and: Orestes in the City

NEW YEAR'S EVE / Lee Upton The way the word limit infected the conversation, wobbUng through and making its Uttle hut on the outskirts of the city___ Who liked the sound of it? Those without limits were narrow enough, weren't they? The people within us straightened, the gorgeous outsiders floating up through lustrous antechambers. We did not grow such large eyes until a most recent year and then everything became seeable, the vistas beyond airplane windows, the rime of the fields and the power plant's plumage. It is the year of our birth into one house where no one speaks, another violent with smaU smUes, next we are with the multiple people opening our eyes in the dark to their soft eyes and hair. Your tiara must remain unbroken through the end of a century. The city moves around us like a wave in a tank. 96 · The Missouri Review ORESTES IN THE CITY / Ue Upton Who would he listen to now? He had opened his eyes to see the sweet wiUiams with their stunned smaU animal faces. Outside, a clear sweU of bird note thrust a Uttle hole into the air. The language for the famUy curse had not been tagged and assembled. It had become a fluid he moved about in, and then a soft coUapsible weight. For days, the winds had been quiet. The past was free and no one's. The Missouri Review · 97 ...