The Children's Museum

By Ange Mlinko

This article appeared in the March 19, 2007 edition of The Nation.

March 1, 2007

It's hard to know whether today or yesterday was the full moon;
excitement isn't rigorous. It's just river-silvering

blent with the odor of silt where the roofs spike
along a repurposed waterfront.

A beach ball floats above the pressurized stream;
it is disequilibrium that keeps it there. Soap's expressed

as blisters when even gravity works backwards
at the limit of the ball held upside down inside the loop.

Rewards in a game they play against themselves
--"Fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air"--

the shade breaks up beneath the oaks
tithing their gifts against the curriculum

of an armed galaxy. It slides into focus for the instant
I'm brrr, blurred.

About Ange Mlinko

Ange Mlinko, the recipient of the Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation, lives in Beirut. Her most recent book of poems is Starred Wire. more...
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