The Hypnotist's Daughter
By Lisa Olstein
At the London Zoo a toddler falls over the rail
of the Primate World only if you close your eyes
and a female gorilla comes to sit by, to circle
her long dark arm around him only this one time
while the others stay away. The zookeeper says
she lost a baby earlier this year only just barely
and they’ve been waiting months for her tits to dry.
The boy’s mother watches from above
only when I say so the thirty minutes it takes
the right person to lower the right ladder down
only as a last resort. In the interim a newscaster
whose station carries it live only if you promise
not to let go reports that dolphins and sometimes
certain whales rescue people stranded at sea
only when I close my eyes lift them to the air
when they need breathing or swim them close enough
to land. In the interim I imagine the span of time
from when the smooth hard snout finds me
and begins to push only if you promise not to tell
to when we come into view of a shore only this once
any shore. In the interim I pray for what should come
to come. I pray for the cat to come out from under
the floorboards only every once in a while to come
down from the tall maple, to come back alive
only if you say so in one piece, still in her collar.
I pray to be saved, to be sent far away, to be
allowed to just stay home only another month or two
just stay home and erase the objects in each room
with my mind while holding them in my hands
only a matter of time now. I do want to hold them
in my hands, to hold them to my lungs by way
of deep breath only since July and a deeper sense
of inhalation. I pray for you only just this once
to press out from the small veins at the back of my eyes
only you back out into the world. I pray for you
to come and sit by me only a few more minutes now.
Copyright Credit: Lisa Olstein, "The Hypnotist’s Daughter" from Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006). www.coppercanyonpress.org
Source: Radio Crackling Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)