Time Piece

Jem Burch

In 1981, Tehching Hsieh walked outside
his New York studio and did not look back

for a full year. He slept in parks, on benches,
his thin spine knotted up against the bridge.

Wasting time, he called it. Not art, not enough
of an act to deserve a name. In the interviews

after, I watch the cut of his jaw, forty years ago,
chew over the reporters’ words. I waste time

watching him. I waste time capturing things
I have no use for. In the yard of my childhood

home, I dug up dark glass, rusting nails,
while the clouds knotted up overhead.

Somewhere far away in time, Tehching Hsieh
slept under the falling snow. Often I forget

he is still alive, not preserved in the amber
of that winter night. Even now, he evades

capture—I pin such loved things down,
and time spits them out forty years away.

One night I dreamt a dog came to me
across a great frozen sea and dropped

dark glass, rusting nails at my feet.
It sat back on its haunches, waiting for

the next command, which I wasted:
I told the dog to go, and it did.

Jem Burch is a student at Yale University majoring in Linguistics.

ABOUT THE ART | Holding Tongue by Soleil Piverger, 2024. Soleil Piverger is a student at Yale University.