The Two Airheads You Meet in Heaven

In the afternoon they came unto a landIn which it seemed always afternoon.—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lotus-EatersJostling wakes you to your obligation,phonetics sicken, subside. Beautiful, ready to takeyou around, they accustom you, sweepyou out. You coincide. You tryto control their minds by speaking. Heavensmells like hyacinth and like amaryllis.Looks like a woman putting litter into largebags, like a woman putting out geraniums, like peoplecoming toward you from the brushed sidestreets. Each new year foldedhere is a tender possibility in a printdress and terrible earrings. Good points, pie charts,laurels, bloodshed: what’s the story in heaven?Where is it true? No one talksabout the circumstances or acts that broughtthem here. The moons of your two guides’nails are supposed to give all the lightyou want. To openthe prior bring it close: people for exampleran tanks over people. That belongs insidethe shining rim with you. What’s the story? Reducedto perfection. Your hostesses flutter, soft andfirm as your own good. Bring the edges together.

Kate Schapira lives in Providence, RI, where she writes, teaches, and organizes Publicly Complex, a reading series featuring innovative work by soon-to-be-famous writers. Her chapbooks include Case Fbdy. and The Painting (Rope-A-Dope Press, 2008), Phoenix Memory (horse less press, 2007) and The Love of Freak Millwaysand Tango Wax (Cy Gist Press, forthcoming 2009). She's proud of recent acceptances to and appearances in A Sing Economy (Flim Forum Press), Narwhal (Cannibal Books), Aufgabe, Denver Quarterly, Action Yes and Otoliths.