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THE LITERARY
REVIEW

 

 

READ MORE 

an electronic publication
(issue #20) 

 

 

Michela Costello Lakkala

We Are Not Noise

 

 

IF I WERE NOT A PHYSICIST, I WOULD PROBABLY BE A MUSICIAN.

- ALBERT EINSTEIN 

 

 

 

I never gave much thought to physics class.

My teacher only strung pulleys together,

and showed us jars of her silver gall stones.

 

But let's see if I can finally get this right:

sound is a wave between two objects,

the pitch among reaching points. This

 

makes the space between you and me

a humming pocket, a ballad stone

like a fist holding pieces of our dust

 

and light. And since NASA says earth 

hums like a gentle B flat, you are the shift

from E minor to F sharp, an unexpected

 

calming change of chords. So what matters

is not matter, but sound. Einstein played

the violin. This life points to everything singing. 

  


 

 

   

 

 

Michel Costello Lakkala 
is a poet and educator in Washington, DC. She teaches English at The National Cathedral School. Her writing has been published in The Tidal Basin Review, The Glasgow Review and The Edinburgh Review, among others.  

 

 

We Are Not Noise  was published in our Winter 2011 issue, The Rogue Idea. 

  


Loss Control



Loss Control is out, with new stories by
Percival Everett, Christine Sneed,
and Ben Stroud. Poems by
Alex Dimitrov, Stephen Burt, and
Lau
ra Kasischke.

www.theliteraryreview.org

We hope you're enjoying our newsletter. These special edition issues of TLR Read More feature stories and poems from past issues that we particularly loved, and really want to make sure our readers get a chance to read. read more ...

 


With our best wishes,

 

Minna Proctor

Editor, The Literary Review

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About The Literary Review

 

The Literary Review is an international journal of contemporary writing that has been published quarterly since 1957 by Fairleigh Dickinson University.