Are You There?
- Are You There?
The girl at the till counts to three.There's a key on the floor, a fish flyingin a far-northern pool, a picture she blinks with the clickof a mirror. Did she work on rhetoric with you? Did she show offher teeth? There's a walk in the park she's keen to regret. Did shetell you? A word is always out there lookingfor words. And no—she doesn't recall. Whatboy?
The girl at the till lifts a feather out of her thoughts. She watchesthe day turning inward: the rain like a false assumption,the smoke like a bee in her throat. All those acresof lights. There's a moon playing catchwith a pond. A great bear disconnecting itself from a dot-to-dotargument. She picks up a thought from the floor. Is this yours?she asks the man playing guitaron his phone. [End Page 35]
Stav Poleg's poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry London, Poetry Daily, and Poetry Ireland Review, among others. Her graphic-novel installation "Dear Penelope: Variations on an August Morning," with artist Laura Gressani, was acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. She lives in Cambridge, UK.
