Cecelia Hagen Sidelong Glance after a 1948 photo by Robert Doisneau He doesn't look at what his wife is looking at, her hat like a knotted bird, her gloved hand gesturing, her coat buttoned to her chin. He looks at the painting of the bare-bottomed woman leaning in to her mirror. What a plump, pale, cleft invitation that is, there above her stocking tops, the whole of her open, it seems, yet turned away while his wife examines the pastoral scene placed squarely in the window, saying Remember the country house of so-and-so? He too wears a stodgy hat, a necktie in an unfortunate pattern. Life swaddles you in its careful awfulness. You submit, and glance sideways at what you dream about, and think that someone else sees it directly and know that someone else was you, you do remember. Glow Luciferin lights their abdomens. Their smell is on your fingers. It's like catching bells with the shells of your ears. It's like sex though you don't know what sex is. Your mother calls you and your brother in for a bath. Oxygen in the water, in the air. The bugs pulse in the jar. No one thinks about stars, but stars appear. The Field Trip Some of us didn't speak English so well. All of us were quieter than usual, the big trees stunning us into reverence and our guide's hushed tones keeping us there. The air smelled like spice, like sun and air, like fur. A few of the women from far away knelt on the chewy dirt to gather water from a skipping stream into their hands, splashing their faces. "It keeps you young," they explained, cold drops upon their cheeks like children's tears. We admired a mushroom, red with white dots, without touching it. When we were far enough away from the ocean our hair settled and our ears could barely hear the distant thrum. One of us picked a frond of licorice fern and broke bits of it to pass around for tasting. We felt as if something was entering us, waking us from the inside out. Once more we felt the satin edge of childhood's blanket rub across our chins. How like ancestors the trees are at this size, we thought. How small and healthy we feel in the woods, making our way. about Cecelia Hagen