Heidi Seaborn: “This afternoon I saw a discarded upright piano missing its front panel in the rain, which brought on feelings of exposure and vulnerability, triggering thoughts of fears, my mother’s and my own greatest fear—of being unable to breathe. I’d been thinking about the five people trapped in a submersible at the bottom of the Atlantic, their oxygen dwindling. I chose to write the poem in a constrictive form—a left/right justified abecedarian. It’s a throat, a submersible, a dark cloud, an upright piano on the page. And it’s a straight jacket to write in, each word carefully chosen, as I imagine the inhabitants of the submersible rationing their words, their breath.” (web)
