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An Occupation of Loss

 

(The Pink House, 9325 North Bayshore Drive)


If this place has a secret spatial heart,
I can’t see it. Its want and shame are
protected by layers of concrete, gray
and white patches mottling the famous
bright rose and salmon stucco façade.
The house is a machine for living in,

wrote Le Corbusier, and this one has
a bias toward wetness, puts forth
pink on water as risqué contrast—
hues of our most intimate chambers:
flamingo feathers and delicate conch-
shell innards layered in planes. Water

unravels memory, erases claims to
body and time and space. What if
you said open up for me, and you didn’t
mean my mouth. In the original
sketches by Laurinda Spear, the house
is cerulean, glows from within, casts

its shadow out at night into Biscayne Bay
and is also surrounded by it—as if the house
is simultaneously subaqueous and floating,
stairs descending into liquid at either end.
In one drawing, a sailboat named Eurydice
is moored to a banister, while a lone

woman in a one-shouldered gown stands
on an inset balcony looking out blankly
to the flat azure horizon, echoing every
upscale condo brochure. This is not
museum-quality luxury, or a world-class
lifestyle of signature amenities. In the myth,

when Orpheus looks back, a city doesn’t
burn from iniquity; a city doesn’t turn to salt—
but his heart. At the entrance of the house,
an aqua porthole to the pool: a single
blue eye weeping, a peephole, a camera’s
lens, the unnerving beauty of perforations.

A photograph is a writing of light, a witness
that fixes structures in a moment. And maybe
the architect knew we were anticipating what
would inevitably come besides renovation, flood,
cataclysm, or demolition—the slow wearing-down
of splendor and sometimes desire. When you left

and went radio silent I thought of you saying
I’m always tempted to just walk into the ocean.
And yet, sketched in the corners in faint pencil
on the front of the house plans that weren’t
quite blueprint: Miami Night—and on the back,
I will wait for you.

 

Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010)—a 2009 National Poetry Series winner; Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. Her poems have been published most recently in The New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, Poetry, and elsewhere. Meitner is currently a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her newest book, Useful Junk, was published by BOA Editions in April 2022.


"An Occupation of Loss" from Useful Junk by Erika Meitner. Copyright 2022 by Erika Meitner, BOA Editions, Ltd. Used with permission from the author and publisher.

 

 
 

Erika Meitner’s latest book is Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022). Visit with her and her work at the Miami Book Fair 2022 on 11/20 at 2:30 pm in Room 6100. Cover art by: Genesis Belanger, Masculine Still Life, photographed by Pauline Shapiro.

 

 
 

Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2021! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 25 through November 12 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 14 and November 21, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2021.

 
 

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