Sad Little Breathing Machine

Engine:@


Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination—cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v., a documentary

about bees—yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.




"Sad Little Breathing Machine" by Matthea Harvey from Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004). Copyright Matthea Harvey. Reprinted with the permission of the author.