And then I’m in a shiny metal box
moving faster than the other shiny metal boxes
full of light. The man next to me has a name
tattooed on his neck: Tori. I wonder
if she kisses herself at night before bed
or if she’s being remembered in heaven.
Half my life ago the towers were two holes
surrounded by a green fence. We bought hot dogs,
my brother said his first curse, Mom got angry
when we told her she was a little bit racist.
Now, in the dark on a balcony a cigarette
lights up an alley and smolders again.
My body recognizes the feeling of having moved
into a spotlit city swaddled in scaffolding.
I have been old enough to be awake
at four in the morning for some time:
the sound of that cigarette smashed against
concrete will crawl into bed with me,
wake up, and leave the house like a dragonfly
painted on the wall.
Calvin Olsen holds an M.F.A. from Boston University, where he received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. His poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in The Missouri Review Online, Tar River Poetry, Gravel, Salamander, and many other journals and anthologies.