#ampersands

Ampersand patches pngs ⋆˚𝜗𝜚˚⋆ (no credit needed).

An Improvement in Stairs Mairead Small Staid

Through the oculus of the bus terminal at Boston’s South Station, light falls for a hundred feet. A shock, a god, a pillar of light, like that of the Pantheon

if the Pantheon had a McDonald’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts, surly young workers at the Greyhound desk, & an escalator rising to its height—

just like it, that light. A patent for an early escalator called it an improvement in stairs. An improvement, surely, how I’m standing still & still, somehow,

going up & up & up. My favorite patents are the ones Houdini sought for tricks never performed: a block of ice he would leave whole, a box within a water-filled box

he would escape from dry. (I should mention: at least one thing in this poem is a lie.) I can disappear, too: from one place, from another. There’s nothing quite as nice

as leaving, when you’re in the mood. There’s nothing quite as nice as coming back. Years ago, I stood beneath the Pantheon & thought how beautiful, how sublime,

how like the bus terminal at South Station, if it had a Dunkin’ Donuts. During the war, Houdini offered to teach soldiers headed to the front

how to escape torpedoed vessels, German handcuffs. As a kid in Appleton, Wisconsin, he’d dreamed of playing baseball—

the stage of the stadium, the long fly making its escape. The way there is a place in the game called home

& the goal is to get there again & again.

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Also by Mairead Small Staid (hi! <3):  + In Defense of a Long Engagement + Demeter, Midwinter

More poems about Boston and baseball.

For this piece I created an ampersand out of ampersands! I used a total of 603 ampersands and 483 different fonts!

exposing myself as an autistic little freak......... very deep into the will wood hyperfix. it's been like 3 or 4 years.