A Small Song

after The Hum of the Forest, d. Z. Kudła, 1972

My hands are shaking. I reach for something to hold. I pull roots from the ground. I’m in the deep woods, but I swear a piano is singing somewhere near. The world melts in my hands. I find a door in the deep woods. This means there’s a place to go that’s even deeper. It means if you go deep enough there must be a way out. I walk through door after door and walk out back into the woods. I tear my arms off. I tear them off again. I keep tearing my arms off. A pile of arms swells from the ground. My vision blurs. I’m chased out of the woods by a piano. My fingers turn into piano keys. I collapse by the edge of a lake. I dip my piano key fingers into the water. I begin to play a little song. This is familiar. I’ve done this before. I play a little song that doesn’t take place in the deep woods. The trees begin to melt. A clock ticks somewhere nearby. Or it’s a metronome. Either way, time is kept. Either way, a tree can be heard, somewhere, sawing a violin in half.

Reading the World with Kafka

after The Cockroach, d. Z. Kudła, F. Pyter, 1987

Piece by piece we take Kafka apart. Fingers. Palms. Wrists. Elbows. Wings. Vertebrae. We try to get down to neurons. To atoms. I tell you this while eating a sandwich. I use Kafka’s wings to make a coat. I live in the coat and call it home. I bar the windows. I learn to recycle air. I make a chessboard from Kafka’s bones and play a never-ending game against me. The end of the world cannot find me in my Kafka wing coat home. Eventually, I will remake Kafka from his own wings. I will unstitch my coat; I will unmake my home. The pieces will be gathered in a stroller. I will push these pieces across a blank landscape. My little Kafka wing Kafka will soon wake up. I will hand him a burned bible. Together we will learn to read the new world.

A Forest Dream

after Duo, d. P. Szpakowicz, 1975

A woman removes her hands and places them in a glass of water by her bed every night. In her dreams, her hands are a forest that she runs through. Part of her hands are budding flowers. Part is a fox that sips from the part that is a stream. The woman trips on a root, stumbles down the part of her forest hand that is a deep pit. She falls for hours. Down in the pit, she uses the parts of her hands that are stones and dry brush to make a fire. In the deep, dark pit, she folds her forest hands under her head and goes to sleep. 





David Wojciechowski is the author of Dreams I Never Told You & Letters I Never Sent (Gold Wake) and the chapbook Koniec (End) (Greying Ghost).

Website | Bluesky | Instagram