c/o Leo Egger
About the Column:
Poems of Our Climate is a weekly poetry column run by Oliver Egger ’23. Egger also runs the literary magazine group Route 9, whose literary magazine The Lavender is opening submissions for volume 4, which is focusing on pieces about women and gender! Submit and read past issues of The Lavender at Route9.org. If you are interested in having your poem featured in this column, Poems of Our Climate, please email your work directly to oegger@wesleyan.edu.
The piano is all the body cannot do
By Lilly Gitlitz ’23
Every emotion
teetering on finger-segment shelves
fell dumped
upon smooth ivory and stained wood.
These patterned keys call dissonance pleasure
and
what if this instrument
is just a vessel for myself
forging undulating autonomy?
Stark alone, its identity resides
in bowlegs rippling body brass honeycomb interiority,
the visual composition.
Bloodied tusks and hollow heads and
Earth withered to a stump
for music-poachers! New plastics! Sweet vintage!
Do you feel
Naked? When this thing shows you
you?
Imagine if people made pianos from their own spine.
Would we pulp or carve the bone? Reaching for the literal
intertwining of body and instrument.
How selfish it is
to look to others.
About the Poet: Lilly Gitlitz is a writer of songs, poetry, and nonfiction. A junior from South Florida, she is inspired by concepts of home, environmental change, and how sound interacts with language.
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