Topography of Whole Notes and Holes
BY BEN READ
Lewis and Clark High School, ’17
2016 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Editors’ List
An empty room. A window screen
that pixelates the view
of unfamiliar architecture
and off-green grass.
My suitcase
waiting for me to crawl inside.
I unfold, turn
its cover, a pop-up book
with mountain climbers in sketched
clothes and backpacks
two dimensional and therefore empty.
A destination: a hotel room
where the beds are cradles underneath
a children’s mobile
with a heart at the center
of the moon’s orbit
and these gravities
are pulling us
to the center of the earth—
all my unpacked laundry
paper outfits and cutouts,
my body filling
the spaces in between.
Where the cardstock is torn, at the top
of the highest paper peak
I cut out the moon;
it lays flat in my hand
like a sand dollar,
a jagged planet
unbeaten by waves.
I turn it over to its dark side
and it becomes
less like a coin and more
like an eye, brown
with a pupil of emptiness brimming over
the space inside a whole note.
Something is missing, as if
I might emerge
from the black and white pool
in color, as if I might step
out of myself and arrive.
