From the plane, I watch clouds over the country
as a thin coffee trembles on a tray.
The world is not dead
& my hair grows
longer. With gloves,
an agent images
my hands. In a seemingly forever,
I am ordered to sit at a table
beneath a clock. Like a mountain,
an agent reads
every page of every book
I have carried.
I wait.
He pins moths to the walls
of my sleep. Autumn
ensues. Something irrevocable
has happened.
Andrés Cerpa is the author of The Vault, longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award: Poetry, and Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy from Alice James Books. He was raised in Staten Island, NY.