Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
The Embodied Mind

Anna Seidel


Storyline

We move forward, unerringly knotted
in the secureness of larger patterns.
But because of that,
we are much more likely
to fall
Once triggered
and only re-gathered by dreams on a storyline.

Side sleepers

We children,
cuckoo kids traveling.
We are looking for names,
that a laughing god
could call us by.
We share
enchanted places
and memories framed in sunny windows.
Hold me.
Feel me
in your hand.
We weigh ourselves
to sleep
on the sister
scales of Libra.
My nine cat lives
are exhausted.
I do not invent anything.
I am sleeping
in your hand.


ANNA SEIDEL is a German-Dutch writer and recent graduate in economics and philosophy at Harvard University and the University of St. Gallen. During high school she published a novella in German and successfully participated in short story competitions, winning the A.E. Johann Literature Prize. Most recently, her poetry appeared in UK magazine Brittle Star and her translations of poet Else Lasker- Schueler are forthcoming in The Anthropocene.