translated from the German by Ellene Glenn Moore

I stand in the kitchen
and write lists: A’s jokes
B’s lack of news
C’s own personal reality.
Inertia. Monster.
Dust. A little more
I think go on now something
is coming back to you. Individuum
in German: unspaltbar.
Do I really still see
carnivorous plants
on the inside of the matryoshka?
Who cares about the house?
About all the split boards
where loose hairs catch
trembling for years
in the slightest draft? I guard
my lists under the table.
The neighbor brings quinces
deeply luminous
and about to turn.
We stand in the kitchen
and laugh about the dust
that never settles about all the other
things we cannot seem to hold. She says
perhaps now the fathers are sitting
down to the kitchen table cutting
the quinces beginning to whittle
giving away their time their presence.
In front of the houses their cars will wait
magnificently like breeding horses.