The Museum of Natural Science

posted May 11, 2010

Do we love Heaven? Do we love
Heaven more than God? Or do
we only love our lost Fargo?
One becomes frightened to move.

My name is three words for small yet contains
one hundred and three clumsy exits. As unselective
in its abandoning as its excess.
My name smothers me like a stone does a bug.

Don’t call me anything.
When archeologists say things
are "perfectly preserved"
they are talking about dead things

which are entirely imperfect to me.
Because one funeral should not house
another funeral, we mean to be better.
We could mean to be much better.

I should speak
for myself.         (I don’t
                         want to.)

Paula Cisewski is the author of Ghost Fargo, Upon Arrival, How Birds Work, and Two Museums, and the co-author of Or Else What Asked The Flame. Ghost Fargo was selected by Franz Wright for the 2008 Nightboat Poetry Prize.

We’ve published four more poems by Cisewski: “Thanks, Nebraska,” “Having to do With the Manner in Which we Transport Night,” “from The Poor Choruses,” and “Ode to Continual Loss.”