Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
The monocle is a circle the eye is a circle
after Tristan Tzara
The monocle that walked with you
Rolled off the curb
Lay still in the wet leaves
The poems fell from the trees that year
With sugar crystals in their veins
Reminiscent of summer
Those leaves that were a thousand fingers
In summer pointing this way and that
Until the road your companion got lost
Among a thousand arrows labeled this way
And I remember you used thumb and flower
No, finger, to screw that lens
To your right eye
The late blooming flower of focus became you
Leaves drifted down, until
Heather Green is the author of the poetry collection No Other Rome (Akron Poetry Series, 2021) and the translator of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018). She teaches in the School of Art at George Mason University. (updated 10/2022)