It’s as if the Wall Were Transparent – Kenton K. Yee

Actually it’s a drawing
of a room glued onto

a larger drawing of a wall,
both flat, both arrangements,
curls and shadows
on canvas that

were you to enter
heart and gut would follow,
leaving behind depth and time.

The taste of a nickel dipped in mayo,
the eek-eek of floorboards.

No space, no motion nor weight
but angles, shades, intersections,
a window

with white for panes.

The eek-eek of floorboards,
the taste of mayo on a nickel,

caw-caw, caw-caw
from behind the panes,
blackbirds imagined

outside the room you
have entered without entering,
yourself within.

Kenton K. Yee recently placed poetry in Constellations, Plume Poetry, The Threepenny Review, Sugar House Review, Rattle, Stanford’s Mantis, The Indianapolis Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, LIGEIA Magazine, and Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, among others. Kenton writes from northern California and consults in artificial intelligence.