Aria Aber’s “The Institution”

In a new poem from LARB Quarterly no. 41, “Truth,” Aria Aber imagines the joy of a rock rolled endlessly uphill.

By Aria AberJune 1, 2024

• LARB Lit

• Poetry

This is a preview of the LARB Quarterly, no. 41: Truth. Become a member to get this issue plus the next four issues of the LARB Quarterly.

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The Institution

Most literary was the sun those weeks—it touched everything,

and yet it was restrained: first it turned the alphabet blue

and lavender, and then it hid the world entirely.

The windows were locked, and all the tools were toys.

I balanced a bowl of kala namak on my head and called it high art.

And there were gag orders on the ideas I would develop

in my nightly solitude, but all I could think of

were the thinkers who, close to the end of their lives,

jumped from windows in dusty apartments, because all that thinking

got too tedious. It’s important not to imagine just Sisyphus

but also the stone as happy—the stone, being rolled up, and down,

getting to be touched by the grass everywhere. How happy it is! Imagine! Grass!

I had a different lesson to learn, but still, I was dreaming of ecstasy,

of oysters with fries and speeding through the night.

The stone was my friend, I decided, and every morning,

I was a furious child dancing in the grass, the valves of my heart

opening to the truth like the gills of a fish in a cold, private river.

It was a Tuesday in America. Oh, I was lucky to be here.