American Chordata: Magazine of New Writing Issue One, Spring 2015 | Page 137

we’ll use the words we’ve been given
to describe time. Like we’re supposed to,
we’ll say years ago, and not acknowledge
how units flicker, elide, swell
a decade into seconds and then it’s not a
matter of how long, days into a barbed
valley, so before and after are terrains
that don’t touch. We’ll use a month
with its attendant numbers, naming a
moment remembered for how a tea kettle
can sound so abrupt, how even stocking
feet on old carpet make some soft noise.

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