Hundreds of tiny windows composed
the view before my eyes shut, night
after night, at home.
Tiny panes held tiny men who
typed on keyboards and
talked on phones to carry on
their affairs, and who knows
what else, perhaps a girlfriend
or two, trips abroad, imports
and exports, new products.
Once I saw one turn to the window
and cradle his head in his hands
while he slammed his phone into
its base and stared at the moon
in I assume despair.
I lived a few floors up, between the man
and the moon, and through
the air between our buildings
I wondered if he could see me too.
Halle,
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting piece. I love how you play with distancing yourself from the story through the "air between our buildings" and yet place yourself firmly within it through your assumptions. I also like the note on which you end the poem - the possibility that as you are creating a story about this view, maybe someone else is creating a story about you too. I had a small suggestion - instead of "in I assume despair", maybe you could phrase it as "in what I assumed to be despair". Also in the first stanza, is the "shut" referring to your eyes or to the windows? I'm a little confused.
Hey Halle,
ReplyDeleteVery "Rear Window" of you to examine the lives of strangers from afar! I like it! I think you do a fantastic job of capturing the macro-level movements of the tiny people in the tiny windows doing their day-to-day jobs, but would have loved to see a micro focus on someone other than one of those tiny people! I imagine with a perspective such as that held by the narrator, there are plenty of other people to view in such detail. Perhaps by adding a different figure into the poem, you'd in effect add innumerable others, left unmentioned, rather than leaving it up to the reader to assume it's just a gigantic building with the same types of men clacking away on keyboards.