A mathematician suggests the moon be exploded,
its mountains, dry seas, and craters crumbled
into a universe suddenly without menstruation,
croissant, moonbow, and hunting goddess wild
with breasts. He calculates Earth will teeter,
dimming inconvenient tides and slaying
seasons, the result summer eternal and glories
of wheat, cosmos redesigned for deathless
productivity. Afterward, without respite
from sparkling sun and blithe birds, no one ignites
bonfires or sings, because black oblivion
and hush are no longer the pith of everything,
and even the mathematician wearies
of lips grimacing with happiness, stained
by berries, each mouth a clown’s pert
smear of pretense and lifeless, dried crimson.
The Shallowness of the Visible
There is more life below ground than above,
so perhaps we are
on the wrong side of the world
and should be star-nosed moles,
wiggling the celestial
because it is part of us
and of the darkness;
our firmament, instead, is distant:
exotic specks and swirls
seen only when night masks
the glare without mercy
on our upright, fragile,
and unadorned heads.
its mountains, dry seas, and craters crumbled
into a universe suddenly without menstruation,
croissant, moonbow, and hunting goddess wild
with breasts. He calculates Earth will teeter,
dimming inconvenient tides and slaying
seasons, the result summer eternal and glories
of wheat, cosmos redesigned for deathless
productivity. Afterward, without respite
from sparkling sun and blithe birds, no one ignites
bonfires or sings, because black oblivion
and hush are no longer the pith of everything,
and even the mathematician wearies
of lips grimacing with happiness, stained
by berries, each mouth a clown’s pert
smear of pretense and lifeless, dried crimson.
The Shallowness of the Visible
There is more life below ground than above,
so perhaps we are
on the wrong side of the world
and should be star-nosed moles,
wiggling the celestial
because it is part of us
and of the darkness;
our firmament, instead, is distant:
exotic specks and swirls
seen only when night masks
the glare without mercy
on our upright, fragile,
and unadorned heads.
