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Player Piano
My face is a case study
in gravity. A face study. A grave.
Effaced, I introduce myself
by name, a quippy
delegate, ceci Susan,
this lifelong stand-in.
Named after my mother
or rather, the pseudonym that hid
her foreign origin. Shoushik.
She’d take her breakfast
on the balcony. Tehran
1943. Feeding the ants
and plants her onion-tisane
milk. My little mother.
From her ovaries
came I. An alloy.
Reproduction reproduces
inexactly, doesn’t it?
Soldering like to unlike,
an off-rhyme, like me
and time, the clock ticks.
Those aren’t notes but holes
that make the music.
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Susan Barba is the author of two poetry collections, Fair Sun and geode. She is the editor of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide, which won the 2023 American Horticultural Society Book Award. She earned a PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University and works as a senior editor for New York Review Books. [“Player Piano” appeared in the New York Review of Books, 1/16/25.]
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Golnar Adili (Iranian American),The Organization for Documenting The Mood of The Country, 2013. Printed Japanese paper,hand-stitched thread, batting, canvas. 42 x 60 x 1 inches. Used by permission of the artist.