Letter Beginning with Two Lines from Tomaž Šalamun

by abigail zimmer

Fucked by the Absolute
fed up with virgins and other dying sufferers
I take to walking the lengths of neighborhoods
taking longer if there's snow or traffic lights or—
haha! an Energy flowing for somebody else.
To disappear without a trace is a thought
I have had or read about in books.
Yesterday on the train a boy thought it cute
a girl rode for the first time
(please, it is not the virgins I am fed up with)
and oh my not-god
another chained up bike is missing its tire
I am missing you
and the country is missing absolutely
a kindness toward another body.
Am I the god of my body? I give it again
and again to people I might or did love.
(Now I pass a dog missing its back legs
a child missing her hat
a woman saying to a child where did you put your hat?)
Forget bodies! In my mind I create a space
where you are healthy: whole and imperfect
in the way we love imperfection. Inexplicably.
Snow sometimes as rain sometimes as ice.
You are here because I think of you.
I am awake because I think of you.
The dog wears a sweater that is red or pink.
The child doesn't know where she put her hat.

Ghost Ocean 20

Abigail Zimmer is the author of girls their tongues (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2017) and the chapbooks fearless as I seam (Dancing Girl Press, 2014) and child in a winter house brightening (Tree Light Books, 2016), which received the Chicago Review of Books' 2016 Poetry Award. She lives in Chicago where she is the poetry editor for The Lettered Streets Press. Her work has appeared in NightBlock, The New Megaphone and alice blue review, among others.