All of Us Running
Sarah Wetzel After Freedom of Movement, a video installation by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani Consider a man running: a man running through the center of Rome. He passes the Colosseum, circles Circo di Massimo running down and into and out of it through the Arch of Constantine. Consider him carefully. His feet are bare as he passes the triumphal arches. Rewind and replay the footage of a man running. There are men in chariots, men on horses, men on motorcycles escorting him. A man on a motorcycle paces him, chases him. The man running is shoeless, his legs, dusty. His feet touch the ground and then lift off. He is a aloft, held aloft on a strong wind or a winch through his back. Consider a man running. Consider the look on his face. There is a dog. Sometimes there's a dog. There used to be many dogs. He is aloft and running in air, legs churning in air. He is running for food for water for furniture he is running for refuge for rope he is running from machine guns and machetes he is running from emptiness toward an even bigger emptiness filled with our sound. Past the Protestant Cemetery, past the Tomb of Priscilla, the soles of his feet strike and strike and strike the ground. Consider a man running. His shadow passes over the earth, disappearing as if into it. |
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About the Author: Sarah Wetzel is the author of River Electric with Light, which won the AROHO Poetry Publication Prize and was published by Red Hen Press in 2015, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published in 2010. A PhD student in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, Sarah also teaches creative writing at The American University of Rome. You can read more of her work at here.