Ode to the Impossible Machine

posted Apr 13, 2007

Hovercraft, stay longer.
When I am most alone, all
evidence of your construction
and mechanism disappear,
even my continual habitation
of your starboard side.
Choosing a direction
is as laughable as it is
necessary, occupied
as we are with pressing
ourselves against the giant earth
and never once touching it.

 

Mary Austin Speaker curates the Reading Between A and B poetry series in New York City, which pairs emerging and established writers for brief and luminous readings. Her poems have won prizes from the Academy of American Poets, Seattle Review, Diner and Lumina. She has received fellowships from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Indiana University, where she was Poetry Editor of the Indiana Review.

Speaker's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The International Feminist Journal of Politics, Ninth Letter, and Bat City Review. She works as a book designer and illustrator and lives in Brooklyn.