In the parking lot,
a sea of cold cars. A dirty
fluorescence lights up
the endless aisles inside.

As a pictorial arranger, God
is inexhaustible. The imagination
craves to continue past
whatever’s before it.

Long, long moments
of extension—
like speech in the silence
of the night.

The slight, chemical smell
of the bakery bread
swells large and mellow inside,
like a full moon

over some courtyard.
It’s a new year: how can I
see without meaning
to do anything about it?

Sandra Lim is the author of the poetry collections The Curious Thing (W.W. Norton, 2021); The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize selected by Louise Glück; and Loveliest Grotesque (Kore Press, 2006). She is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and lives in Cambridge, MA.