Chorus Attempting to Interpret Unearthed

Fragments of Their Play

BY CAROLINA EBEID
Can you let go the concern
for how it began what happened

Here the word house remains

A reddening ( ) near house

To describe the sounds

coming in A human voice
barks through the window

the same voice like horsehair

stretched along the bow drawn
across the strings

Where the action is missing

we place ( ) A girl pours out

water from a pail flung up

so that the water arches
into a sickle in an instant
of daylight

The word swallows as a complaint

of swallows raiding the air
suddenly thick with gnats

When you notice the ash

you will mutter ash
& it will appear again: ash
on everything, behind the ears ash

Maybe this shadow belongs

to the house at 4:30
Shadow is a length of gauze
loosened over the garden

It began with blizzards

for nine hours

A cleft on the ceiling

or a cleft in the chest
No matter, a cleft let
the weather in

Here is a description
of a face in anger
a weather of arrows

Instead of counting sheep

the injured man folds clothes
in his head into heaps

Separate what is missing

from what’s disappeared

(here has been eaten by silverfish)

We are left to think of ( )

as the space between falling

asleep & waking up
Swallow can be a passage

the gullet, throat,

a grave in the ground
We’re surrounded by swallows

that open ( ) so fluent with bodies

nobodies

Here there was a story

& we were part of the after-
waves in a disaster

braiding wreaths of roadside flowers

The violet ones we’ll call purple daughters

The white ones: asylum lights