| Canceled
© 02.12.09 By Michelle M. Tokarczyk
The Middle East interrupts me like a poem.
I'll be drinking coffee, riding the bus, making
a shopping list then
stray words from possible conversations.
Rudimentary phrases in an alphabet
I can't recognize. Or, to be honest,
a stain of white on a darkened sky;
children pelting riot police;
bodies wrapped safely for burial.
I planned to mark a line from New York to Cairo
to Tel Aviv to New York, settle
my memories like cushions on a couch.
The trip was derailed before
the trip had even started, but the journey
had begun. It goes on like waves
in the Atlantic, continual replay.
One image, one headline, submerging
into another, an undercurrent.
New York, Cairo, Tel Aviv, New York
a moebus strip. I can neither arrive nor leave.
Neither can they.
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