Carol Dorf
Detail of Silence
Encircled, in a ghostly frame, the face
drops its mask, only two fingers to the lips
as protection from the monster balloon
of perfectibility. Infinite progress
another heartless notion, like bright trains
passing through landscapes littered with old
leaves and strips of peeling paint.
Here the doors that put the visible
at the service of the invisible
are jammed open, and children run off
with the keys, keeping away until the moon
rises and draws long, frightening shadows.
A girl watches through her mirror, and says
nothing to the crowds that gather on the otherside.
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Carol Dorf‘s poetry has been published in Illumen, Spillway, Sin Fronteras, Antiphon, Composite, About Place, The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Scientific American, Maintenant, OVS, Best of Indie Lit New England, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor of Talking Writing, and teaches math at Berkeley High School. She attended Clarion West where she studied with Connie Willis and Karen Joy Fowler.
