Grant Schutzman

Quarantine Hotel

As if it had all begun today,
the sun drowns streetlamps and
our other earthly lights. Fireflies
of the morning make their way unseen
between traffic signs and painted lines
on the road. I unfurl like a greenhouse
orchid. I press against the day’s window
and drink the air’s steam. Once I’d read
the city’s bones on the soles of my feet
I never went back. Our breath is the crime
we cannot help but commit. I weave
the many paths from one door to the other.
I fold the wings I made long ago
from mothskin and a dying light.

Grant Schutzman is a poet and translator. He is fascinated by multilingual writing and that which has been deemed the untranslateable. His poetry and translations are forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Rust + Moth, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, Ezra, and Your Impossible Voice.