Ur and the Encyclopedia Britannica by Zinnia Hansen (17, Washington)

On the other side of my tiny town is one of the most well respected poetry presses in the country. I have been told I have what it takes to make it all the way, the whole seventeen blocks. But seventeen years have come and gone. And even the three blocks to the grocery store feel like an odyssey of epic proportions. 

It’s funny how we measure life in blocks. We turn even the most mundane measurements into vertical distances, towers and poems. Civilization has always been very dense. Ancient Ur was only .27 square miles. And stacked precariously high, the Encyclopedia Britannica occupies less than one square foot. ​

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My poems swallow galaxies with their vastness. I’ve tried to remedy the problem, submitting to pretty little magazines, taming my wild breaths until they curl in my throat. I’ve tried to make myself complex. And I think I am getting somewhere. I really do. But the sanctity of each and every detail I record is destroyed by the pervasive, clawing infinite. I have never been able to build boxes. Instead of pounding the nails into place, I always end up hitting my fingers. 

My goal this year is to buy a well made box from the carpenter that lives down the lane and stuff my soul into its frame until I twist, fold and collapse, until the laws of the universe and civilization transform me into something entirely regulated, entirely new, intricate and beautiful. I will sit there, squished, until I finally learn how to play chess.

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