Francesca Abbate

Everything is half here, like the marble head of the Roman emperor and the lean torso of his favorite. The way the funnel cloud which doesn't seem to touch ground does— flips a few cars, a semi— we learn to walk miles above our bodies. The pig farms dissolve, then the small hills. As in dreams fraught with irrevocable gestures, the ruined set seems larger, a charred palace the gaze tunnels through and through. How well we remember the stage— the actors gliding about like petite sails, the balustrade cooling our palms. Not wings or singing, but a darkness fast as blood. It ended at our fingertips: the fence gave way to the forest. The world began.