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.