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An Underworldliness

for Aileen Winter Mostel

Maybe a maker makes
another out—by the mark
of the mechanism—
keyboard cabaret—
clown in love with his club
(one foot's spondee).
I turned it over

in my sleeping head—
that fallow feeling—
pillow a numbset's
handskull till

from the fidgeting synapses
rose an REM of
ultivated answer—
all-but-seeing

eye on a stem—the
glancer born to blow
by way of aneurysm—
at what altitude or depth,
what certitude or asterisk,
nobody seeing
could see through—

the star was visibly
newfangled, brimming
from a wave or cup one was
to drain or fill—who knew?

Sidewise it angled, and shone up.

—Heather McHugh

Heather McHugh is the author of Eyeshot, The Father of the Predicaments, and Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993. She is the Milliman Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Originally published in the July/August 2006 issue of Boston Review



Copyright Boston Review, 1993–2006. All rights reserved. Please do not reproduce without permission.

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