Jeannie Vanasco
like the stagehands who wheeled out the sun when the lead
was under the moon; like the scientist who thought the seeds of trees
blown into the sea make birds—
"I have seen them fly from the waters," he wrote;
like me denying that you had died in the night—
"He's asleep, I said;"
like Newton dividing white light into the seven colors of the spectrum
for the seven notes of the musical scale for any other way would break
the Pythagorean principle of harmony.
Jeannie Vanasco is an assistant editor at Lapham's Quarterly. Her work has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The Christian Science Monitor, The Georgetown Review, and elsewhere.