Behind Closed Doors 9 by Saqib Mughal. Image courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery.
There are several names for god
beside god, and all of them
bespeak grandeur. I turn
to look at the mollusk
as directed. It’s the size
of an infant’s fist. A woman
appears to collect her laundry,
hanging on the line in a Piazza
in Italy. Unrelated phenomena,
in different time zones, as the
busy, unruly earth makes its
rounds. I see labor on the
horizon, hours stacked
upon hours like dirty plates
in a flophouse. Wake me up
when it’s over, the idea that
we are separate from the world
in which the soul comes undone.
~ Virginia Konchan
Author of ‘Vox Populi’ (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and ‘Anatomical Gift’ (Noctuary Press, 2017), Virginia Konchan’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets, The Believer, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere.Â
