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Out of the forced teak forest of furniture

and out of the rain in these last wet days

in my old apartment — these last silent days

of Pompeii, I wait for a peculiar death

to turn into life and I listen to Ella singing

her song and I let myself think it’s old and tinny

If only I could be neutral, looking for a tile a day

Knowing — since I cannot touch your knee or ear

this might be the reason for rescuing an apartment

might be why I want only random color and a chair

made to look like a six-fingered wooden animal to hold me

This is also the first time I think singing might be a cop-out:

this is her hammock, this song Ella lives; I hear it, I swing

in it, I try to have fun picking tiles, I tell a self: could be

Ella is just singing and not caring who is out there listening

O just ho-hum these tiles, don‘t take moving so seriously

— Rosaly DeMaios Roffman

Rosaly DeMaios Roffman teaches myth and creative writing and is the author four books: Going to Bed Whole, Tottering Places, The Approximate Message and In the Fall of a Sparrow, a chapbook commissioned by the Pennsylvania Governors Institute for the Humanities. She directs the Squirrel Hill Poetry Workshop, and resides in Oakland and Indiana, Pa. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Tuesday night at 7 on independent radio, WYEP 91.3 FM.