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Dara Wier
To an Escalator
I’m afraid of your teeth, your riding
Instructions, and your skirt.
Your tread boards and your newels
Liquefy my muscle and bone.
Your opaque balustrades frighten me,
Your transparent ones cut me to the core.
When you tempt me to think about what goes
On inside you, my thoughts shift into reverse.
I have no thoughts.
When I stare at your demarcation grooves
And your yellow stripes and your tiny rows
Of blinking lights, put there to call my
Attention to the end of the steps, shivers
Pull my knees and calves and heels past
Bearing. As kind as your handrail can be,
I have trouble understanding what it’s doing.
I have dreaded your molding.
When I stand at your floor plate and look up
At you climbing away from me, I’m hypnotized
And I cannot touch you.
If I stand above you and watch your strange
Descent, I’m sucked through a shaft straight
Through the earth and out into space.
I genuflect in your vicinity.
I’m prostrate and I bring you sacrifices
And gifts, frankincense and high grade
Petroleum products, work boots and hand-painted
Silk slippers, stiletto heels, silver curbs,
And a handful of small change.
Hymns that extol your glory should not be sung
By intoxicated angels. They should be sung
By sober children, recently orphaned, frozen.
DARA WIER teaches in the program for poets and writers in Amherst at
the University of Massachusetts. Her two new collections are Voyages
in English (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2001) and Hat on
a Pond (Verse Press, 2002).
“To an Escalator” appears in our Spring
2002 issue.
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