Exhibits in the Museum of Dust: A Poem by Jared Beloff

Dust in Attic

Exhibits in the Museum of Dust

after Todd Dillard

All foreground is background,
a violence of tender voices.

The children have adapted. They swirl,
a mobius strip of arms outstretched

catching lashes as they fall, their pockets full.
We shield our eyes pretending there is still

separation and sky. In a dark room, a man
continues to brush layers from his coat sleeves:

they smear like confection, palms shimmering,
diffracted gray with the scales of moth wings.

Down the hall, a woman weeps over a mound
of nail trimmings: she remembers only spiders

eating their mother, her blushing abdomen,
an orange web quivering in the sky.

In the last room there is an open window, a light
that fails to pin our spiraling bodies to the floor.

_

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

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