Evan Rose
Class of 2011
430 Rose, as published in the fall 2010 issue of Cellar Door.
Then, finally, the bird,
whose every place was an empire of itself,
or no place was an empire at all,
Evan Rose
430 Rose
For a while the MOMA allowed
visitors to approach a sort of rostra
flanked by stacks of black speakers
and scream into an unplugged microphone.
This was right in the museum’s capacious gut,
the kind of internal space that remembers
a cathedral, if only because sometimes
sparrows swoop in and can’t figure how
to swoop out (or don’t want to).
I suppose the comment intended
was something like, “a man never feels
more alone than when shouting
in a crowd,” but there weren’t any placards.
And anyways, it reminded me more
of the time a slick pigeon went hara-kiri
on the green glass of my office window,
sweeping in from somewhere up Park
in an even trajectory that turned L-shaped
after contact. I confess my first thought
was not for the fowl, but the passerby
at the end of the L, below, toward whom
this grey little mass was now helicoptering.
Next I thought of the coffee ring
where my mug just was. Then the scratch
on the window. Then, finally, the bird,
whose every place was an empire of itself,
or no place was an empire at all,
whose worlds meant nothing of enclosure,
but always tall shapes in the sky, spindly facades
of gothic cathedrals, interjections, lampposts.
