In the Beginning
Peter Leight
we’re sitting down together at the table, on the same side of the table, right next to each other, we’re getting to know each other, like the kind of introduction that makes you want to keep reading. Nobody’s pointing fingers. There’s nothing to straighten out. You don’t even need to know where you’re going to sit before you sit down—which comes first, the chicken or eating out? When you go out you open the door and don’t even close it, going both ways like a kind of arbitrage, I mean there isn’t any difference between moving around and something that happens to you. Everybody has the same rights—we’re not even thinking about what we deserve. The rooms are starting to fill up. Or have they just emptied out? Sandwiched between free play and test time, the boys and girls are getting to know each other, like a story that adds onto itself when you keep reading. The boys don’t know how to be nice, the girls don’t know how nice to be, is it better to be nice to somebody who’s not being nice? Using the possessive as much as possible, practicing for when they need it. When you turn around there’s nothing behind you, it’s not even a surprise when you don’t know what to expect, as when you take something out and it won’t go back in. The girls are lining up, the boys are cutting in line. Nobody has assigned seats, it’s not that simple—is it better to wait for somebody else to go first? Which is first, totally or whatever? There are petals on the ground from the blossoms floating in the air, taking their places. When we sit on the balcony at the end of the day there’s nothing to look beyond.
Open City of Free Content
Peter Leight
When the city opens up everybody comes in, joining everybody who’s inside, opening all the doors and leaving the doors open until everyone’s inside, as if it’s a meeting that doesn’t start until there’s perfect attendance. Everybody’s responsible for the content, sharing the content with everybody who is also sharing with others, like a kind of multiplication that makes it even better—what is a city but the content we share with each other, what is our city but the freedom of association, like a bridge shaped like the spokes of a rotating wheel? When you open something you don’t need to close what’s already open, we’re leaving our files open, it doesn’t even matter whose content it is or how much time we have to share the content, we never say I’ll get back to you. Picking it up and leaving it where it is when you’re done with it, buckling up and unbuckling as needed, of course freedom is what we bring to the table in the first place. When you’re tired of taking what’s given to you you open your hands and put them together at the tips like the roof of a house that opens up at the top, at the highest point—openness is an idea with a lot of others inside it, all the others actually, like one of those cups you can drink from without spilling. I mean it’s not an authority you submit to. Nobody has too much right next to somebody who doesn’t have enough, nobody’s sinking under the weight of somebody else’s content, there isn’t any power, not even the desire for power or the urge for power, or the power that’s available for a price, or the power when you’re more powerful than somebody who’s not as powerful, together with the power that isn’t even exercised. Nobody’s saying shut up or move over. If you give your content to somebody else the other person gives the same amount to you. This is just an example, there are plenty of others.
about the writer
Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, and other magazines.