At the accountant's, I enter
a small room stacked with numbers.
It's a math cupboard. An assistant
deducts me from this box
to escort me to an office
where the desk is as sleek
as a panther. Someone
behind it plays a sonata
on an abacus. She wears
a tailored gray suit
with a fringe of bumble bee
fur. When the music
of calculation ends, she says,
"Repeat after me: I owe,
and I don't owe." "I
oh, and I don't oh,"
I say, adding, "may I pay
you in dreams?" She says no.
hans ostrom 2016
