[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/BottiglieriAtlas.mp3″]
Jan Bottiglieri
DEAR ATLAS:
Of all the Titans, I would say that you’re
my fave. Your picture’s on my closet door.
Others see muscles like Missouri; I
see the blue interstate of you, a place
I can drive myself into like a root,
send shoots down into your busy marrow,
that bloody factory. I would be
the inbetween of you, Atlas, the way
you are the inbetween of Heaven, Earth:
bipolar, feet in the sweaty ocean
and shoulders prickled by the needling stars.
I love how the sky doesn’t murder us,
how even daffodils, with their big dumb
faces and skinny necks, will get a chance.
I understand it all: your igneous
skin; your melancholia, the tide
that brings boats in. With me, you’re not alone.
I feel the way you keep us on the lip
of earth beneath the lip of sky. Dear Atlas,
the others don’t see what I do.
I have a book of maps and call it You.
—from Rattle #36, Winter 2011
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