Panopticon

Abstract

Panopticon Brenda Shaughnessy (bio) My bedroom window can be seen from the viewing deckof the World Trade Center. I’ve seen it.What I saw? My roommate experimenting with my vibrator.She looked lovely through sheer curtainson my creamy bed. Is she thinking of me? I am thinking of her and I left bread crumbs on the telepath.She can feel it, my seeing, even through a trance of fog.I’ve lit her with it. It is her blindfold, her sweet curse, her rationof privacy spilled like flour as she imaginesthe miraculous bread is rising. I decided on three possible reactions: To keep watching her and, when I go home, to mentionthe strange vision I had, describingwhat I saw in detail. To feed the telescope with quarterafter quarter, and read a book while the time ticks.I have been blessed with seeing, as with a third eye,without the compulsive mimesis of appearing. The luxuryof an octopus is never using any legs for walking. Or, to stay home with my ownpair of binoculars, in the dark, watching whoever iswatching me, watch me. [End Page 177] Brenda Shaughnessy BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of four books of poetry, including So Much Synth, published in 2016; Our Andromeda, finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize; and Interior with Sudden Joy. Her poems appear in The Best American Poetry, Harper’s, the Nation, the Rumpus, the New Yorker, and the Paris Review. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and daughter.* Copyright © 2016 University of North Carolina Wilmington