{"id":398,"date":"2017-01-01T14:26:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T20:26:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespectaclstg.wpengine.com\/?p=398"},"modified":"2019-12-03T11:29:51","modified_gmt":"2019-12-03T17:29:51","slug":"poetry-by-rosebud-ben-oni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=398","title":{"rendered":"Poetry by Rosebud Ben-Oni"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Move in Orbits So Distant from Each Other<\/h4>\n
\nSo we’ve fallen asleep at the helm of our satellites
\nand our spaceships
\nwhich wish themselves
\nadrift.
\nWho’s to say
\nthey too do not feel<\/p>\n

that final surrender,
\nscavenger,
\nship-wrecked
\non an atoll?<\/p>\n

We are so close to something
\nthat never did.<\/p>\n

I’ve lost sight of star, comet, plane.
\nIn deep space<\/p>\n

there is no coral ring
\nregenerating our dreams.<\/p>\n

This world we want to leave is not a cautious thing.<\/p>\n

This world
\nso we say
\nwhen we were never its transmissions
\nbut its limits.<\/p>\n

How I’ve tried otherwise.<\/p>\n

How I’ve separated into three thieves
\nwhen brought up to a tower,
\nwhen all someone could do was bring me up<\/p>\n

to a tower,
\na crumbled-footed
\nthird story walk-up,<\/p>\n

and try to take wing<\/p>\n

while that body bled
\nand calcified,
\nsoftly,
\none more crack in the ceiling.<\/p>\n

Is this why we wish for new planets?<\/p>\n

I’ve gotten ahold of something here that cannot be found.
\nI mean the very first song, which was never written,<\/p>\n

which came from a bird<\/p>\n

who never knew she was singing<\/p>\n

or that she was at all
\na sense of terrible awe
\nwe’d put together wrong
\nin cold-blooded scaly skin.<\/p>\n

She never sang as if her world would end,
\nthe world,
\nthis world,
\nthis restless, rancorous waiting of the world.<\/p>\n

She is all that did not
\nleave itself
\npetrified,
\nglacier,
\ngrotto.<\/p>\n

There will come a time you won’t be able to reach me.<\/p>\n

There is only distance, and only distance will never die.<\/p>\n

Only dark energy grows and grows<\/p>\n

drifting everything further<\/p>\n

endlessly.<\/p>\n

I have to say yes.
\nI’m saying yes,
\nunknowable
\nas any world can be
\na single space.<\/p>\n

Come to me
\nwhen I awaken
\na flit of her wing,
\nwhere it all begins
\nthat stellar,
\nrapturous
\nsong,<\/p>\n

all those stellar, rapturous angles of her colossal love.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

When My Phone Doesn’t Ring It’s Everything<\/h4>\n

in this world I cannot save
\nits freshly scooped ice cream
\nand mayflies and heartbeats,
\nand the sweetest fruits
\nsun-dried on a tin roof in august when there’s not a single breeze
\nand I’m falling asleep in a car parked in direct heat.
\nWaking the wrong hours is any place<\/p>\n

stranger,<\/p>\n

and maybe it’s you
\namid all this concrete
\nand all the deserts and all the seas
\nwhere pins have erroneously<\/p>\n

dropped me<\/p>\n

and there’s no motherboard or meteor storm,
\nnor the weather of your world could I save,
\nthere’s simply no perfectly nice day,
\nso the scientists say
\nno one is sending us messages and no one
\nis taking calls, although maybe<\/p>\n

when my phone doesn’t ring<\/p>\n

it’s you
\njust as uncertain too
\nwhat turn this has taken.
\nMaybe someone is telling you
\nthere’s no such thing, no such ridiculous thing,<\/p>\n

as the tears you only leave
\ncut off and voicemail-full,
\nas going stir-crazy
\nwaiting for text bubbles that disappear
\nwithout word,
\nas waiting
\nas waiting for me
\nto pass through Grand Central
\na little after seven in the evening,
\na little thing like me dodging
\nLong Island commuters
\nlinebacking to their trains, there’s no such thing
\nheaded to Poughkeepsie, Long Beach, White Plains.
\nSurely, in what world, would an 8:07 lead
\nto a cold, rocky seashore evening
\nwhen I disappear into breakers so openly,
\nand even then, even if one hundred percent
\nit’s you
\nand your alien
\nbreath filling my lungs
\nwhat would linger the longest, surely
\nnot no such thing<\/em>, each the other
\nunconvinced
\nit’s you::<\/em>
\n::it’s you<\/em>
\na test,
\nthe many things within
\nwanting to be saved.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s waking on the rocks
\nin the middle of a storm,
\nand all the shelter in the world
\ncannot save us,<\/p>\n

when in all misery<\/p>\n

it’s you<\/p>\n

we go on missing
\nin the middle of the day
\nwhen crossing the middle of a street
\nwhen it’s again warm enough to say it’s all for you<\/p>\n

that we carry on around the way we do
\nlike we have all of two days
\nand only two days to leave
\nthis world
\nsomewhere
\nsaved
\nwhen it’s you
\nit’s sharing time
\nand a leap of faith
\nthat it is you::<\/em> it was always
\n::you<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Rosebud Ben-Oni is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a CantoMundo Fellow. She is the author of SOLECISM<\/em> (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013), and an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in POETRY<\/em>, The American Poetry Review<\/em>, and Prairie Schooner<\/em>, among others. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review<\/em> blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Move in Orbits So Distant from Each Other | When My Phone Doesn’t Ring It’s Everything<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}