Paula Cisewski's first full-length collection of poems Upon Arrival was released in 2006 by Black Ocean, and her chapbook How Birds Work was published by Fuori Editions in 2002. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Swink, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, Conduit, Black Warrior Review, Pilot, Forklift OH, and others. Poems from her new manuscript Ghost Fargo are forthcoming in Handsome and Coconut. She lives in the Twin Cities where she teaches writing and humanities courses and hosts the Imaginary Press Reading Series.
Piano Solo
—i.m. Bobby Peterson
On the tables of the club romantic
flames flicker flick, certainly
tonight. Let’s be a great audience.
Fingers are to keyboard as droplets
to river as eyes are to blue. See
keys. See also contributary. See with
your ears a brittle film from inside
the piano works of a piano player gone
missing. Already off in the wherever
writing original lost songs. (Fingertips
beyond us, a record.) Riff off
the weight of bodies going up and back
down. A staircase we know by heart.
first appeared in Melic Review
Upon Arrival #37
I have lived in hotels
for years. I want for a parakeet.
I want for a philodendron
like back when. They say
you can't kill that plant, but
you can kill that plant.
You there, if suddenly
reminded of the words
to a song you never sing,
please sing it. Sing
right now. How I desire one day
to stand before a stove and, listening, ruin
your dinner. Though the preparations
were so elaborate. Though it was
going to be beautiful.