Ina Roy-Faderman
Path of Totality
In August
the sun will disappear.
Science promises—
the moon’s shadow
nictitating west to east,
the sun winked away.
I wish I were an unbeliever—
or rather, someone for whom
simple belief in coming darkness
is a matter of faith,
or rather, of lack of faith.
A simple, clean,
unanswerable split between black and white,
as clear as the edge of the moon
and the brilliance of star shine
around it.
Who knew
facts could be so hard,
and unyielding?
Like galls—ugly but unwanted
protectors of trees from internal enemies—
I cannot ignore them.
As I am, I am doomed
to see metaphors
in the sudden quieting of the birds,
two minutes of cold like a gash
in the late summer air,
sudden darkness
where once was light.
Ina Roy-Faderman’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, If You Can Hear This: Poems in Protest of an American Inauguration (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), Transition: Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2017), and elsewhere. Recent honors include Outstanding Poem (Richmond Anthology of Poetry) and a 2018 Pushcart Prize nomination. A native Nebraskan of Bengali heritage, Ina teaches bioethics for Oregon State University, is a fiction editor for Rivet Journal, and is the librarian at a school for gifted children. Further information can be found at inafelltoearth.com.
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