ISSUE 3 · FALL 2009
Subterranean School GEORGE SELI
“I’m still kind of green at this,” I say as I stumble in sneakers through tunnels lined with lockers of grayish ore—a dull beetle, stumped by rock.
Suddenly I turn right. I turn correct and am struck by the crystalline light of the classroom. Here webbed wings of whispers bat
unheard about a professor’s head, oblong and smooth— stratified with knowledge.
Here I must sit until I learn the equation that is the echo, its infinite variations— crumple my complaints in dusty fists as lessons project overhead in filmy hieroglyphs.
Here I share the dream of getting high upon a measureless green carried by whims and winds that defy the gravity of theory.
A dean like a djinn will say, “Let us take a moment to look down at our shadows and remember how we were.” Mortar boards fly like felty birds, testing air.
There is nothing opaque there, nothing hard or heavy— “None of the below.”
The answer drips singularly from many dark cranial roofs peculiarly formed in rows. |
George Seli is a New York-based trade magazine editor and doctoral candidate in philosophy. His poetry has appeared most recently in Crab Creek Review, FutureCycle, and Epicenter.