Paula Cisewski

CHANCE OPERATIONS

What about the luxury

of generosity

of certain music

of lightning sprawl

and of making work?

What about how a day is always

never what we expected,

exactly, it to be,         

and so each arrives,

solely in its own

way, predictably.

In the disintegrating radiance,

the newlyweds couldn’t choose what

to do next. In every direction,

toward or away from every rally,

lives someone else to love and

someone else to loathe.

They just climbed into

their car and drove.

Paula Cisewski's second book, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize and released in 2010. She is also the author of Upon Arrival (Black Ocean) and three chapbooks: How Birds Work, Or Else What Asked the Flame w/Mathias Svalina, and Two Museums. Poems of hers have most recently appeared in failbetter; Poetry City, USA; REVOLUTIONesque; and BOMBlog. She lives in Minneapolis.