New American Poets
New American Poets: Idra Novey
At the Visitors' Exit
I'm no mother myself.
But as for absence,
I'm pretty familiar.
Know the lack in English
for a word like embora
or bedisha, a smallish word
for a particular kind
of leaving, to say of a person
who can't be reached,
she's gone
embora.
To a somewhere
that doesn't allow for trailing
or peering in, an air-shape
like the building hiss
around a plane
on the runway.
The wind-place
that is leaving.
All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
When I'm in a car or on a train, I like thinking about where else I might go if I didn't go to the place where I'm supposed to be headed. This habit may explain my history of speeding tickets and detours and why I often get off the subway a stop too early, or too late. I think it also has to do with why I never tire of reading poems. I love that they can go anywhere, and do. They can also go nowhere, and I like the honesty of that ending as well.
Bernini said people give themselves away by what happens on their faces just before and after they speak. Poems are also like that—they give themselves away just before, or after, you think you've arrived.
