‘Dark Storage’ by Elizabeth McLagan

We, like Salangan swallows, built the world – an enormous nest, put together from earth and sky, life and death, and two times, the ready to hand and the defaulting. – Boris Pasternak

From that which does not survive
unbearably altered, decommissioned
consigned to a vault

From that which is their undoing
unfiltered sunlight
a crowded room
furniture, food, graffiti
the lithol red no one knows
will fade to ultramarine

no varnishing, no plexiglass
sixteen years, a fugitive landscape

Rothko in New York
listens to Feldman’s Swallows of Salangan
six woodwinds, eight brass, eleven strings
two pianos, harp, guitar, and two vibraphones
a chorus of eighteen singers

The conductor gives the downbeat
and each performer chooses
the durations of sounds

a gradual lengthening
a coming together
a drifting apart
sound constellations

So out of time, time itself erased
what came before
what will come after

The notes will play
the playing will end
with the first measure of silence
and breathing and tears

From issue #9: autumn/winter 2019

About the Author
Elizabeth McLagan is the author of the poetry collections In The White Room (2013) and MyRothko, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Boulevard, L.A. Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She has won an AWP Intro award, the Frances Locke Memorial Award and the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Poetry Award.