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A weekly poem, read by the author.

"The Riddle of the Shrink"

By Nuar AlsadirPosted Tuesday, March 8, 2005, at 12:33 PM ET

Listen to Nuar Alsadir reading this poem.


It is the distress of losing a ticket
or any other document granting passage.

When the phone disconnects
just as you were about to be let in

on a secret, you become the letter
that never receives a response, the ball

that rolls under the neighbor's fence and stays.
The friend you have entrusted with your death

song, an editor, has changed the words.
Now it is you, not your modifiers,

who will dangle, suspended between this world
and the next. The image of the future

is the memory of the dream in which
you are standing before a kiosk, attempting

a transaction with a forgotten code.
The more you talk, the more you are left alone.

At times, you are curious whether or not
someone is in the room, but fear it would be

too revealing to check. At times, you strain
to hear another's conversation while feigning

involvement in your own. When the subway doors
open and everyone rushes to take a seat,

you are trying to get over to the right lane
in fast traffic. It is like wearing stockings

with a stretched-out waistband under a skirt,
or dreaming that the alarm is about to go off.

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Nuar Alsadir's poems and essays have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Grand Street, Agni, the New York Times Magazine, and Bookforum. She teaches writing at New York University.
Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.


Please note: Because Slate's backlog of accepted poems is substantial, poetry
editor Robert Pinsky will not be reading new submissions until December 2005.
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