Hear me/mi senti?

There is a gap between C3 and C4, behind my larynx

a blue foam room and a shaving cream slide
give way to my stomach

Under my jaw are yellow tight ropes

My ears are wind tunnels

that ache and hiss

A scourge travels up my eye escalator

and enters the scalding nasal passage

Simmering drops collect under my eardrum

forming impressions of my waning pallor

My toes wiggle in the ashes

In this chilly Autumn

I hide fingers away
and slide them into my intercostal pockets

also known as my empty ribs

Can anybody hear me

Why is this cloud yellow?

Can Indigo be so lovely

I look beyond the flood lights at my indigo infinity

obviously I block out the chimneys

obviously

and I play with The One Me, my clipped hair.

that I set aside and hid in the rail of a wooden bunk

It is intermixed with my mother's strands

I know she can feel me around her this way

all the single strands intertwining

Kissing me like

she does at night in the linen sheets

Did

with my night light still on

How cliche

I could hear her playing my favorite Etudes

and I would imagine I was George Sand

That I was in bed with Chopin

Back then

To continue now is hopeless, my only words are

crescendo and largo

The piano, outside my door, and my linen,

crisp and cold

fold me

We are between my fingers
enfolded around my palm


listening to the indigo sky

The c sharp and her frozen brown wave

Andante
Largo

andate al lago?

al lago

Come andate?

Andante
andate in treno?

andate

Sono andati furiosamente nel fuoco

Paolina Weber

2/13/11

for Giovanna Friedman Ukleja who survived Auchwitz at 16 with Romano Ukleja, a polish worker, who saved her in the line. When Auschwitz was liberated they hitchiked to my grandparents in Rome.She told me they had on German nazi uniforms and that my grandfather took them straight to Giolitti, near the Pantheon, for ice cream.

*Translation from Italian Music Tempo and colloquial:

andante=walking (moderately slow)

Largo=broad (slow and dignified)

andate al lago?= are you going to the Lake?

al lago (the lake)...

Come andate? =How?

andate (moderately slow (solemmo))
andate in treno?= you go by train.

andate=go, then go.

sono andati furiosamente nel fuoco=they went furiously into the fire