The harmonies beneath this life, like a floor holding him up (he
swayed there) that then falls inward. Just when he heard the trombones,
he believed, his brother died.
Any irreal sound, terrible, but the Silence after and before,
substantial, fertile. And then that Second Silence, shifting beneath the
First, threatening to give way.
39 The Paris-American
OliviaClare's poems appear in Poetry, The London Magazine, Southern Review, and other journals. Her short stories are forthcoming in Ecotone and The Hopkins Review. She was the 2008–2009 Olive B. O'Connor Fellow at Colgate University. In 2011, she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Fellowship. She's also received fellowships from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Djerassi Foundation. She co-edits The Winter Anthology.