Land Bridge (one vast sestina)

Sep 14

Perched at the epicenter of the epi-

center. Stamp of maple floor cornered

on my screen. I'm a quasi-solo dancer in a gallery of pixels, drifting.

Insisting––– like tectonic forbearers long before Zoom–––

A connection corridor! How long from Yalta to Mackenzie, from New York to

(Where Are You?) before being swallowed by The Bering.

See? To be Sharmila. Drowning on a sofa in Queens. Dreams bearing

food forever out of reach... for two long weeks. The gut’s epi-

leptic yawp, “Oh, for ah–––” haranguing like that so-and-so Son of York.

Scared of stepping out. Even to the hallway. Hunger corners

you. Temple Closed. Fridge Empty. No cyclists zooming

deliveries from the shop. Oh, for a snowdrift

of milk to thaw and pour from the note that You'd drift

under a strange neighbor's door, who'd appear like Beringia–––

arms outstretched, a refuge? But the camera zooms

in (all cataclysmic distance refuted) on the mute dark television: epi-

curean shows too painful to watch. Are there witnesses standing at corners,

who (to quote Lorca's Poet In New York)

are our "hobbled great king[s] [and Queens] in the janitor's suit [?]" York

is a city in Alabama, Sierra Leone, Alberta, Australia. Are we drift

(as in glacial deposit?) Root (as in quaking grove?) If one of us subsists on corners

of paper, what's the Dance about? Clang pots. Lay bare

what this takes to survive. Throw wide a window and float evening epi-

thalamiums to grocery clerks, nurses and Gilda, whose fellow subway worker zoomed

in on a cable dangling near an electrified rail. Saved lives! Now, his soul zooms

too towards his God and continental assemblies of flora. Pass York.

Head towards water. Retrace (in thin air) a favorite Hamilton walk. Epi-

stemological banners still booming, "Everything Is More Connected Than We Think." Drift

with me: "Dear 11-yr old Emerson in S. Dakota, your letters to postal workers bearing

gratitude remind me to breathe... to utter 'Thank You,' cornered

in my Brooklyn nook. DJ spinning from his silo'd corner

of LA. Grateful for my mother by her Great Lake window, ZOOMER

issue at her elbow. Oh, to hug the Don River's suburban green scar, born

of The Last Great Maximal Thaw. Shout out to all a' yuh in places not named York.”

Dance to virtually throng 'cause lost are rush hours of fleshy human drift?

Dance to exist. There is a list. 1408 words begin with epi.

Crumpled mask + glove littered corners. Our Yoricks.

Friends who schedule re-Zoom-ions. The strangers who drift

into lives like Sharmila's, bearing donations of food: Life's quietest epic.

Eli MacLaren

Near the Border