Matvei Yankelevich
Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt XL
Brick by brick, the factory is taken apart.
Some time ago the world was a terrible
place to be and it still is a place where
coVee is served hot or iced, that today
is no different and wine sleeps inside
a bottle on a day just like today. It wills
itself stirred from sleep. Then there’s all
that was good in the past, including
the headlights of passing cars filtered
by hanging spruce. The rust of the world
and the world of rust. Things like bridges
and train tracks pushing words
around the past from town to town:
write to me, write me when you can,
write me as soon as you can. There
was the hope that chins wouldn’t double
anytime soon. There was the world
as you knew it, same as known. The smell
of pencil shavings and pen caps, mushrooms
after summer rain, construction dust
slow to replace emptiness, cranes overhead.
There was the day before, and the day after,
roads in both directions, another coin
to flip between us. A dry breeze lifts the page
and lets it fall, doesn’t come back.