Poetry – Issue 3 | February 2009
Four Poems by Amy MacLennan
To the Elevator Engineers
The ‘scrapers are taller
and your job (a dance
of physics and design) is to make
our elevators fly.
I know constraints of cement
and metal don’t allow
much slack. Still,
the chambers rise,
flaunting gravity, slicing air.
And you do know the limits.
Our plunge through floors
must be stopped. Velocity,
after all, is fixed.
But do you dream of endless speed?
I think you would hurl us
through those buildings, streaking
higher and faster
until our eardrums snap,
no matter the pressure
or the cost. The worries
rush to my head
every time the double doors
hush shut. How much
do you love your shafts
of space? How far would you go
to have your cables hum?
About the author
Amy MacLennan loves traveling to places like Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Talent, Oregon (which has the best curried tuna salad sandwich ever). Amy’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Cimarron Review, Folio, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, Pearl, Rattle and River Styx. Her poems are forthcoming in the anthologies Not a Muse and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems.
