Falling Out Your Window

by Rachel Kiel

.
Falling out your window
and coming to rest in a familiar
heap of sleeping animals, I crept
to your bathroom to eat toothpaste.
You weren’t in there, so I was able
to do all of my sketchy translations.
You weren’t in there because
you specifically asked not to be.

Someone else was there, though,
and asked if I was making a list.
I said, no, a poem. He said
what’s the difference, backflipped
behind the sink, was gone.

Now I’m grasping, as at straws,
as at half-formed thoughts, opening
and closing my mouth on yours
like a proprietary fish.

The next time I see you, both of us
will have died. The most important parts
will have turned into golden phones.
Someone is on the line for you—it’s
superhuman, dazzling, and urgent.

Musical Contribution: “Television Waltz”

In Their Own Words

“I sing the lead vocal on this recording, which was made at the Rubber Room Studio in Chapel Hill, NC.  It features my friends and bandmates Patrick Dyer-Wolf on guitar and organ, Omar Ruiz-Lopez on viola, and Catherine Steele on acoustic bass. ‘Television Waltz’ will most likely be the title track on my second album, which will be released in the fall of 2011.”

About

Rachel Kiel grew up listening extensively to her parents’ record collection in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  She studied poetry and music at Wesleyan University, and after college worked on farms in Maine and in offices in Boston. Rachel currently lives in Carrboro, NC, where she teaches rhythm tap dancing and plays locally in several bands. She has released one album of original songs, Table Manners, and is working on another, tentatively titled Television Waltz.