Malak Mattar, Untitled (detail), 2024, charcoal on paper
I Looked Up to See
Gathering twigs
blown from a neighbor’s
dying elm
I looked up to see
a caterpillar
suspended in the air.
It hung by a strand of silk
visible
as a glint of white light
only when
the caterpillar
hoisted
itself.
Jason Tandon is the author of four books of poetry, including The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), Quality of Life (Black Lawrence, 2013), and Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt (Black Lawrence, 2009), winner of the 2006 St. Lawrence Book Award. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Barrow Street, Esquire, and elsewhere. He is senior lecturer in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University. (updated 8/2019)