RAPTERY

After rapturous reading of "hiccups," a new talk piece by David Antin, back in the land where time is elastic, where a stranger hailing from several places at once will walk with one for six hours through jetlag, errands and outlooks, having allocated no such appointment. Having abandoned her vespers in Arabic, volunteering down to the quarter whose river gateways are marked by local dialect poets—Belli, Trilussa—for a bit of the other's sustenance and orientation. Land of the living not the live/working dead. Far from the Mid-American grid and yet a place honoring Chicago's Haymarket laborers in May, not the imminent American shopping day. Coincidence?  The land also laced with song. Coincidence?