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When I put in my notice at the bookstore, the manager—a heavy-set woman in her mid-forties who often spoke in monosyllabic bursts—curtly replied, “We’re sorry to see you go.” Whether my employer regretted her inability to create a work environment that might have fostered my personal growth and tempted me to reconsider my options was beyond the scope of my then-nascent narrative powers, but I did not elaborate, as I did not wish to draw out the details surrounding my sudden departure. Outwardly, I feigned regret, but inside, I rejoiced: I was free, I thought, free to take leave of my post and bid my old, monotonous life among books and bookish people goodbye! A more urgent position awaited me in the form of a transparent eye. I shook the manager’s hand, and before the day was done, I updated my email account preferences so that in one week’s time, any work-related queries would receive the following automated response:

HELLO: I AM CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. I’M CHASING A DREAM CALLED PROSE.

A Child is Like a Clarinet

for Eliza Harris and Henri Akoka

Similes are dangerous.
To equate a person to

an object, an instrument
no less, is a risk.

A child is like a clarinet.
A mother is like a clarinetist.

Personhood posits
promising possibilities.

Poems are willing to die.
Poems dare, just as Eliza

Harris leaped onto pieces
of ice to cross the frozen

Ohio River with her baby
in her hands. Poems flee,

just as Henri Akoka
jumped onto the top of

a moving train with his
clarinet under his arm.

One of these things
is not like the other.

Can’t you tell? Mouthpiece
from lips, flesh from wood.