In Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine
By Rebecca Pyle
In magnetic resonance imaging machine
I and Mary Shelley were joint goddesses of music.
Give me your tones, MRI, Mary Shelley, echoes and Resonancies, integrities, your
shatteredness
Which I can forget or remember or dwell upon--Lying still in this
tunnel so kind in its shape--
Like a snow fort built just low enough to hold me warm and
not-trembling, through all time.
No lover can reach me here: I am one with Machine, in all-purpose
season of sound
The color of rounded arching machine the color of
pancakes and batter, of warm cream-colored blankets
With cream-colored satinette bindings. I lie smooth and
wholly dependent upon operator, leasing out, scheduling
Time in this machine, time to hear sound, time
To add your own dissonance and harmonies, imagine whistles
Which could be blown to find the lost, wherever they are.
Must I leave this machine so soon? I felt true through and through
In here. I found my snow land, not any claustrophobia.
Whose saints signed up to guide us through here? We lie the same
way as if gliding through crematorium retort. As still
and huddled. Lie beneath a dome. But in here you are
alive, glowing, thinking, knowing much more than known in soft underwater
murk of womb. Here you are in
glow of so much more light, someone speaks, to you, you understand and can answer, wish you could chant words
of new poetry as you lie here, chanting codes, revealing to you where to go next time you need to be lost, want to be enclosed.
Rebecca Pyle (she/her) is an American writer splitting her time this year between America and France. Poems and fiction by her have appeared in The Penn Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Pangyrus Literary, LandLocked, Belletrist, and Otis Nebula. Rebecca Pyle is also a visual artist, her artwork also often appearing in art/literary journals, or on their covers. Follow her website for more.