Southwest Review

On Whose Order

Heather Christle
On Whose Order


Imagine if a small bug one day
crawled out from your ear and
thereafter everything changed.
That is the dream. The alphabet
doesn’t change much. Because
a Phoenician sang an order,
the world can be searched
by a machine. When your ear
rings with one high note it means
the tiny hair responsible for perceiving
the note is dying. The sound is its
last aria. I hum along for company,
I guess, and later for the archive.
I don’t know what I’m missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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