Genevieve Betts

Silence, I Discover, is Something You Can Actually Hear

Listen, every object’s in flux—
the whole universe is like some big FedEx box

searching for something, the breath of the dead,
the whispers of people who don’t exist.

Prince sings on, like some mollusk in your head,
carving the words in a deep blue tattoo. Just listen.

Imagine you’re a clam speaking a common language,
the afternoon quietly reeling into twilight.

Words are asleep in a corner of time. The metaphors
transform and I’m on the border of this world,

a maze of eddies. In truth, all sensation is memory.
You’ll live forever in your own private library.

 

Source & Method:  All lines taken from Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore.

Genevieve Betts is the author of the poetry collection An Unwalled City (Prolific Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in Hotel Amerika, The Tishman Review, New Mexico Review, The Literary Review, and in other journals and anthologies. She teaches creative writing for Arcadia University’s low-residency MFA program and lives in Santa Fe.

Issue 23