Player Piano

My face is a case study
in gravity. A face study. A grave.
Effaced, I introduce myself
by name, a quippy
delegate, ceci Susan,
this lifelong stand-in.
Named after my mother
or rather, the pseudonym that hid
her foreign origin. Shoushik.
She’d take her breakfast
on the balcony. Tehran
1943. Feeding the ants
and plants her onion-tisane
milk. My little mother.
From her ovaries
came I. An alloy.
Reproduction reproduces
inexactly, doesn’t it?
Soldering like to unlike,
an off-rhyme, like me
and time, the clock ticks.
Those aren’t notes but holes
that make the music.