Annus Mirabilis of Mäda Primavesi

Do not look to me for answers.I am dwarfed by my own sense of sound.Around my head is a shantung flower.Around my ribs, a garland of rose.In all forms of classical divinationI am the child: my eyes see onlywhat is there. Offstage you will findmy mandolin, a basket of cherries.These are the accoutrements of history,the floorplan of my soul.My maker favors me in white so thatthe pink of my face in high color—after tea and conviviality—will strikethe viewer as pubescent precocity.  ____Virginia Konchan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets 2011, the Believer, Boston Review, and The New Republic, among other places. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, she lives in Chicago, where she co-curates the Wit Rabbit Reading Series and is a Ph.D student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.