Nadia Arioli
On "Dreamy Cars for Waterbury"
Shira Zaid / Exterior
A whale swims differently than a fly.
The oxygen cycles slower but the animal
covers more ground. For a planet,
a thousand years goes by in a blink.
For an atom, a day is an eternity.
But that night, all things were the same size,
my head on your shoulder in the back of a cab,
the night the paint started to thin.
All things swam the same direction—
it was all dreamy cars for Waterbury.
Everyone was in pajamas weeping.
Even the buildings wore bedsheets.
Ahead was someone we half-remembered.
We'll never get out in time.
(But what a beautiful bowl above your breast,
for empty head that nods and nods
and pretends the night will last forever,
that all life can be a wistful elegy
for night-films and one-way cabs.)
Of course, the figure will approach us,
buzz towards us like a fly to fruit,
as ponderous as a whale,
if not tomorrow then in a thousand years.
Its sheets are the size of America.
And I already know what it will ask mouthless:
Tell me, with the shudder of your gun,
is your breath going in or out?
Nadia Arioli is the founder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Spry, SWWIM, Apogee, Penn Review, McNeese Review, Kissing Dynamite, Bateau, Whale Road Review, SOFTBLOW, Heavy Feather Review, and others. They have chapbooks from Cringe-Worthy Poetry Collective, Dancing Girl Press, and a full-length from Spartan.
Shira Zaid is a multimedia artist focusing on poetry, film, photography and movement. She is a sophomore at Smith College studying art history, film and ethics. She is deeply inspired by the points of connection present in all living things. She currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina, where she spends most of her time contemplating that special feeling of infinity most frequently found in art.