Zeno’s Arrow

Abstract

Zeno’s Arrow Hannah Sullivan (bio) All Christmas, washing up,hands in the sink, feet passingjust above me on the street,I watched dirt runnel on thepebbledashed white vault and splaymigrating to the drain,the splaying particles’fine band of carbon stains. All Christmas, this strange fearof being immured inside aninstant, freeze-framed, motionlessas Zeno’s air-hung arrowuntil the unimaginablyfar-off thing got near, thennearer, and the simplestphysics-problem version ofan action was unsolvable.The water sluicing round theburnt bits in the pan, let’s say,the soy-sauce-dribbled salmon skin,first lacquered on, burnt caramel,now fraying loose, seemed evenas I lifted up my wrist—look,here—to lack affinityfor rushing through the airto meet the Cif-scoured sink.The sprouts slouched in their dirtyovercoats, unsoftening.And any sentence that I wrotemeandered off, looked in theshops or just hung out and smoked, [End Page 79] drunk-talked about full stops,and had to be coerced backto its house, locked down. “But isn’t that nirvana?”a friend said, as I salted eggs,passed her the plate, we ate.“I mean it’s weird. But good?”Her voice cracked on the octave jump.Now it was New Year’s day,There’d been a prerolled joint,the disembowelled bodiesof the limes lay round. “Besides,”she said, “we made Last Wordswe danced to fucking Auld Lang Syne,time definitely passed.You hurt your foot.” All true,All true. Only—I felt,like Bartleby, that if it mustI’d rather be recusedfrom squatting down to digeach moment’s grave,consigning it to colourlessMarch weather, blossom middens,then rocking up on muddy heelsto fling the soil. [End Page 80] Hannah Sullivan hannah sullivan lives in London. She is the author of Was It for This (FSG, 2023) and Three Poems, which won the T. S. Eliot prize in 2018. She teaches English Literature at New College, Oxford. Copyright © 2023 Hannah Sullivan