Paradise

I read Inferno (in translation) during college classes
Taken to avoid some entrance exam requirement.
I read Purgatory while studying for my BA.
I never read Paradiso. I only read English.
American English, generic and sit-com; although
Many flavors of slang have threaded into it
Since I was truly fluent.

This summer, I scrape ideas into notebooks,
Dream about dead malls and lost food courts,
Wandering in off-scale hallways, on tile and ice
And carpet. The signs are half-lit but the booths
Mostly empty. Let's tell ghost stories of survival.
Everyone in their sheets.

I think you have to experience it--paradise. Not
Find it lurking in the translated rag and ink and dust
Some poet used to wipe the days from his heart.
We're constantly removing stains, I remember,
From in between the batmen and the wonder
Women; wash the days away, every day is white
Or bright or crisp.

It's too hot to think. Too hot to move.
Everything is caught in the gel, glass dome
Securing us to earth, pressing our dry flesh,
To woven plastic conjured out of nozzles
Like the industrious spider who gave us
Story. We are damp and sticky and unable
To disentangle ourselves.

I never read Paradise.

Apparently, my brain is still ticking over with old ideas or it's trying to get started with revisions but isn't quite there yet. Also, summer is its own swamp of joy. 

-- Chrissa