Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
Amherst College

Sandra Doller


Architecture is an idea that you live in

Architecture is an idea that you live in. Watching the puddle on the roof

of the port like

someone has watched it before. Like this cloud cover covers over clods and

the one

distant still building biding through distinctive medjool palms. It’s all

roofs. I’ve got all

roofs from here and isn’t that envy, l’envie, the idea of another’s things. If

I move my

head a little to the right I can just make it. I can make out star colored

leaves leaving

traces and leavening my sight line like a hem. I wear my eyes like a skirt.

She had eyes

the color of a newbie. A red empty vase sits hollow in the hand. You can

make anything

this way. Any. Thing. Why is it wrong to right into the spaces. Not space,

not not a

moon, not a new page, an old horizon. How many years did a woman live

here before

me. This is the question you ask yourself before moving in. Once you move

in there is

no moving anymore.


SANDRA DOLLER writes words sometimes and says them, sometimes aloud. Her most recent books are called Leave Your Body Behind (Les Figues), and The Yesterday Project (Sidebrow). Current work includes something called Not Writing, collaborations, translations, and performances, and an anti- memoir called King Daughter. Doller is Associate Professor of creative writing, literature, and film at Cal State San Marcos. She lives in California, at the bottom.