“Goodbye Persia” by Terita Heath-Wlaz
Spring 2008, Volume 32, Number 1
In the post office dungeon, bronze catacombs have paisley bones.
The tunnel’s easy maze of one choice luminosity under orange lamps.
Like a blind salamander, the intensity of happiness.
A word about red wagons and men with mustaches�
They too arrive here, and later leave.
They wait in line like bread crumbs.
Their boxes attracting colored stickers like fruit flies
though mine is a fig.
The letters used to get seasick or bruised on the back of a horse.
Squalls bumped the atoms and sometimes the scent of rose water up and left.
The eventual hands were not comfortable. That was a kind of insult.
It felt like surgery, or its aftermath, with the gauze.
Forget the rose water.
Set up an outgoing auto reply information relay race
delay of more than four hours
and wait til Christmas to pay homage to the animal skins and vegetable parts.
A hand stitched envelope that used to be a luna moth,
An astounding moth you crumpled like a handful of leaves.
Terita Heath-Wlaz graduated from Brown in 2005 and moved to San Diego where she now lives and works. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Court Green, Coconut, Bird Dog, Juked, and 3AM Magazine.
Tags: Spring 2008