Skyscraper
A sword thrust
into the city.
From inside
the café, the letters
on the window
look like a new
language. It’s this
simple: There is
nothing within us
like what we are
inside this window.
Colossal seppuku,
you are the sky
before the sky.
Copyright © 2013 by Matt Rasmussen. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on August 6, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
"I began this poem when I lived in Boston, where our apartment had a view of the John Hancock Tower. The poem was once two separate, longer poems, one about the Hancock and one about the café, now trimmed down and mixed together. Growing up in a small town, tall buildings have always amazed me and I think the poem has its origins in my childish awe of skyscrapers. I think the poem began with a game I am constantly playing inside my head: imagine something as something else."
—Matt Rasmussen
Matt Rasmussen
His poetry collection, Black Aperture, was selected by Jane Hirshfield as the winner of the 2012 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets