1425: Sensory Profile | Brittney Corrigan
"Sensory Profile"
Brittney Corrigan
i.
I could pretend I know
what you’re thinking when
you’re spinning wheels, your eyes
intent on the turning, your body
remarkably still. Or spinning
yourself, never dizzying, eyes
tuned to the whirl of the room. You
are running now, back and forth,
circling, colliding your quick
little body over and over into
my body, or any soft thing.
ii.
The way you are immobilized
if I remove your shoes on the lawn.
How you hold out your hands
for me to brush off the sand, every grain
too overwhelming to touch.
How this food is not warm enough,
that one is too slimy, this one
is not a perfect rectangle. You melt
before my eyes, we rock and sing,
rock and sing, rock and sing.
iii.
My driver’s window opening is acceptable-
fresh air. Your back window opening
sends you panicking like a trapped bird.
Your eyes widen and tear, you try
to lean away in your car seat. You are quiet,
terrified, eye of a storm about to shift.
But then the streetlamps set your eyes
steady, focused. You center and lean
into their glow, their simple illumination
of what a moment ago we couldn’t see,
what gradually moves into our view.
iv.
How you love to cross bridges.
Vibration of the steel under the car, lights
in neat, bright lines, the river beneath
a soft rushing, the bridge lifting us
to safe architecture of air. You love
the ones with perfect angles and x’s.
Those lit like a ladder of stars.
And the kind that were built improbably.
Lowered whole from the sky.
On this day in...
2011: "April" by Herbert Read
2010: "Red, Orange, Yellow" by Donald Hall
2009: "Water" by Sharanya Manivannan
2008: "POEM FOR NOBODY" by Charles Bukowski
At night when all the colours die,/they hide in pairs//and read about themselves -/in colour, with their eyelids shut.
Brittney Corrigan
i.
I could pretend I know
what you’re thinking when
you’re spinning wheels, your eyes
intent on the turning, your body
remarkably still. Or spinning
yourself, never dizzying, eyes
tuned to the whirl of the room. You
are running now, back and forth,
circling, colliding your quick
little body over and over into
my body, or any soft thing.
ii.
The way you are immobilized
if I remove your shoes on the lawn.
How you hold out your hands
for me to brush off the sand, every grain
too overwhelming to touch.
How this food is not warm enough,
that one is too slimy, this one
is not a perfect rectangle. You melt
before my eyes, we rock and sing,
rock and sing, rock and sing.
iii.
My driver’s window opening is acceptable-
fresh air. Your back window opening
sends you panicking like a trapped bird.
Your eyes widen and tear, you try
to lean away in your car seat. You are quiet,
terrified, eye of a storm about to shift.
But then the streetlamps set your eyes
steady, focused. You center and lean
into their glow, their simple illumination
of what a moment ago we couldn’t see,
what gradually moves into our view.
iv.
How you love to cross bridges.
Vibration of the steel under the car, lights
in neat, bright lines, the river beneath
a soft rushing, the bridge lifting us
to safe architecture of air. You love
the ones with perfect angles and x’s.
Those lit like a ladder of stars.
And the kind that were built improbably.
Lowered whole from the sky.
On this day in...
2011: "April" by Herbert Read
2010: "Red, Orange, Yellow" by Donald Hall
2009: "Water" by Sharanya Manivannan
2008: "POEM FOR NOBODY" by Charles Bukowski
At night when all the colours die,/they hide in pairs//and read about themselves -/in colour, with their eyelids shut.