Leora Fridman

Because It Was An Incident

I dialed out for help. People still
came over & were quiet around their mouths.
People busied themselves shelling snap peas
that I had not anticipated would come in so soon.
People brought with them stories of the sights.
They had stood on ice floes in order to catch
the decay & had learned to leap higher than
the mines. More superhuman behavior was to be
expected given how incapacitated I found myself.
More people went out for filo dough as if only
to mock me; not to eat. As if a single airplane flight
was what put a planet over the edge. Don’t stand
by the window, someone told me, you might
be mistaken for a virtual face. The house was
full of pictures of ways to make a mild scene.
 

3D House Of Beef

for Peter Gizzi

This is me at the table with my three friends. Actually it’s no friends, it’s animals I said I would eat. Hello, obligation to be free. Hello, every last friend I didn’t make this time. I’m giving up on you. I am going to stand only on the things I feel like standing on, and sometimes that means they have a little give or sinkhole. Sometimes I’ll sink a little into this 3D House of Beef. At least my slope’s made of something. You don’t even have a hand. You don’t even have a hand in making a home for yourself. I don’t blame you, but I stand on my beef. When I stand in here I can make my table out of anything and I don’t have to explain. This is an animal I’m standing on and I know what being that means. These are houses of allegiance. These rooms are familiar slides. If a friend wants to come over they have to deal with the beef first. They might try to be outraged at the beef, but that will only make them slide faster. These slopes are friendly. You can see them again if you want. You can talk human to these slopes. I’ll stand on my extroverted slopes and they’ll stand in for me.

Leora Fridman is a writer, translator and educator living in Massachusetts.