Visible State

by Paul Ilechko

Who is that looking at me from the mirror
it’s not a face I recognize      a single eye
that is the exact same color as itself
no matter which one I close or leave open

I’m an educated man this fact has been
planned since I was a child       I speak
a single language but I speak it well
can you see the threads of cultivation

as they tumble from my throat       it’s a stream
that froze one time      but only briefly
the people who grew up around me
imagined themselves as victims of the state

deferring nonetheless to the very authority
that they despised they dreamed of
wrecking statues and other dynastic symbols      
they dreamed of chopping down a forest

of pine       building a new city with the endless
supply of timber       I see them now
as a kind of multivalent mirror image
an inoculation from the very idea of sickness

half that image has faded to nothing       I pass
through such spaces with extreme care.