3 poems by Malia Jackson
***
A RADICAL NEW KIND OF SPACE THAT HAD HITHERTO
SEEMED ABHORRENT AND IMPOSSIBLE
-OR-
THE MYSTERY SPOT
If you tilt your head slightly maybe the illusion will disappear. If you stand on your head maybe it'll be a new one altogether. A large ball of magma already spins under your feet. Frilly, like marine invertebrates. We should call in all the physicists, the psychologists too. Just a trick of angles, they'll all say. With a constant increase, the surface starts to crenellate. The ends of baby lettuce leaves. The pendula they can explain away, but the carpenter's levels are baffling. The billiard ball is neither weighted nor magnetized, but I can't say the same for myself. Attune to the seismic vibrations. Feel the angles with your feet. This world of rectilinearity is a creation; these freeways we cruise speak to us in straight lines. A subtle and surprisingly fecund concept: a constant negative curvature.
***
***
DANCE PARTNERS
Trying to reinsert a sheet of paper lifted from in between two cheek-to-cheek bowling balls. Then the noonwhistle. Then back to my swivel chair. I think of the alignment of the planets. How much harder does an obstetrician have to pull? Does a birth disrupt the tides?
The chair is moved suddenly. Ass meets parquet, but certainly not for the first time. Old acquantainces, those two. From back in the day, when legs and cochlea hadn’t yet learned how to waltz. As the sheet of paper is confettied by the shredder, I think of the unobservable twist in a long metal rod. I think of the collision of galaxies.
Galaxies can collide, but it’s not as calamitous as all that. On average two stars intersect. Then a lone spangle glints on a beaded skirt. Swish, not bang. Mostly just a foxtrot.
***
***
THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN UNTANGLE THIS STRING
• A doughnut is not a doughnut. It is the glaze on the doughnut. A doughnut is also not a bagel. Bagels have no glaze.
• A bundt cake is really just the pan. The pan can be extended arbitrarily. Infinitely deep cake.
• Pants are pants.
• Saddles, too, are what one expects. Think Pringles®.
Just before the first time I ever did math, you told me pants contained saddles. I then said, of course, because when you wear pants you can sit in a saddle. This was noteworthy.
***
A RADICAL NEW KIND OF SPACE THAT HAD HITHERTO
SEEMED ABHORRENT AND IMPOSSIBLE
-OR-
THE MYSTERY SPOT
If you tilt your head slightly maybe the illusion will disappear. If you stand on your head maybe it'll be a new one altogether. A large ball of magma already spins under your feet. Frilly, like marine invertebrates. We should call in all the physicists, the psychologists too. Just a trick of angles, they'll all say. With a constant increase, the surface starts to crenellate. The ends of baby lettuce leaves. The pendula they can explain away, but the carpenter's levels are baffling. The billiard ball is neither weighted nor magnetized, but I can't say the same for myself. Attune to the seismic vibrations. Feel the angles with your feet. This world of rectilinearity is a creation; these freeways we cruise speak to us in straight lines. A subtle and surprisingly fecund concept: a constant negative curvature.
***
***
DANCE PARTNERS
Trying to reinsert a sheet of paper lifted from in between two cheek-to-cheek bowling balls. Then the noonwhistle. Then back to my swivel chair. I think of the alignment of the planets. How much harder does an obstetrician have to pull? Does a birth disrupt the tides?
The chair is moved suddenly. Ass meets parquet, but certainly not for the first time. Old acquantainces, those two. From back in the day, when legs and cochlea hadn’t yet learned how to waltz. As the sheet of paper is confettied by the shredder, I think of the unobservable twist in a long metal rod. I think of the collision of galaxies.
Galaxies can collide, but it’s not as calamitous as all that. On average two stars intersect. Then a lone spangle glints on a beaded skirt. Swish, not bang. Mostly just a foxtrot.
***
***
THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN UNTANGLE THIS STRING
• A doughnut is not a doughnut. It is the glaze on the doughnut. A doughnut is also not a bagel. Bagels have no glaze.
• A bundt cake is really just the pan. The pan can be extended arbitrarily. Infinitely deep cake.
• Pants are pants.
• Saddles, too, are what one expects. Think Pringles®.
Just before the first time I ever did math, you told me pants contained saddles. I then said, of course, because when you wear pants you can sit in a saddle. This was noteworthy.
***
posted by *&* at 3:17 AM
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