from: “I Was Told That Every Poem Was About the Moon” by Ann Pedone
I bumped into Anne Carson when she was on her way to Bendel’s. I pulled out my pocket dictionary and asked her why the entry for “sky” was a blank space. She mumbled something about Baudelaire and the relationship between Jacques Brel and The Oresteian Trilogy. I couldn’t really follow. I nodded politely and left for the park. When I got to the park I looked up at the sky and pulled the dictionary out of my pocket and threw it against a tree.
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There is a language no one ever spoke. It has been recorded that its words tasted of myrrh-bud and yellow pear. Prepositions were still covered with moon dust. Nouns were held together with verbs not unlike petals to a stem. Vowels swam in the veins of trees, thick of sap. Heavy and sweet.
It is said that a man who lived during the time of Plato swallowed this language whole. He said it was easy to eat as it had consisted of just one word: “bird.”
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The sky has its own thoughts. You think of the patience of trees. The practice of waiting. The feel of his hand still in yours. Suddenly the elevator moves and you forget his face. The elevator moves and you see a green subterranean light coming in through the gap in the door.
Ann Pedone graduated from Bard College in 1992 with a degree in English Literature. She has a PhD in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. Ann’s work has recently appeared in Comstock Review, Adelaide, Apricity, Birmingham Arts Journal, Cholla Needles, and Visions International. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.