Carolyn Guinzio

(We keep returning to the surface.)

The neck of the girl in Girl Reading is angled
over a book. Light does not rise from the page
and through the eye enter an interior gray.
The red sun is balanced on the other hand.
In short, the sky. In theory, the creek at the edge
of the grounds, the gray waves conveyed
by fronds of rain on paned and warping glass.

Behind this world, that other—

Where a spine divides the hemispheres.
Her shade placed it back on the shelf,
its spine painted over. Her spine bent,
a book balanced on the other hand.

(We on the bench in the center of the space,
note in our notes, in a word, the word the white
space conveyed, where white is, that is to say,
emptiness is fear, but here, from every angle
it is gray, gray and ghosted with grooves that call
to mind the mind. We return to the surface,
unable to say what we've seen.)