CENTO by Selena Spier

                
                Something there is that doesn't love a wall. 
                The stiff earth bending a little. 
                Something shimmers, something is hushed up. 
                In Gaza with its glad tidings of abundant joy. 
                In an American sonnet that is part prison, 
                part panic closet—O for God's sake 
                they are connected underneath.
                And the simplicity of space pauses strangely 
                at the center. And the day will come 
                when a young woman in Beirut will muscle 
                her way through a nightclub and dance until her 
                feet hurt, and I won't be on this earth anymore. 
                And the sun will come alive. And the boats 
                will come, too, circling under the sun. 







The sources are, in order of appearance, Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," Louise Glück's "The Wild Iris," John Ashbery's "This Room," Roger Reeves' "Children Listen," Terrance Hayes’ "American Sonnet For My Past and Future Assassin," Muriel Rukeyser's "Islands," Hajri Aga’s "Breakfast Poem," Hala Alyan's "Tonight I'll Dream of Nadia," and Elisa Gonzalez's "Home."

Selena Spier lives in New York City, where she works at the nonprofit Brooklyn Poets and co-curates the KGB Bar Monday Night Poetry Series. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. 

13 April 2026