Quantum Parenting in Three Dimensions
How were you supposed to recognize a
vibration housed in stone? This was your first
time, the furthest you’d made it into breath
and life, twenty-one years which to you seemed
eternity but to your mother was
always a moment that went too fast, like
stepping into an elevator shaft
she knew was empty and for less than an
instant comprehending flight. Others tried
to warn you: Pick this stone, not that. What you
need now is sedimentary; forgo
metamorphic until you understand
it. We never told you to avoid the
elements you weren’t ready for, matter
not a chart but a library ladder.
Make clear it’s sturdy, we should have said. Be
sure you know all of shelf four before you
jump to shelf six because otherwise too
much will be missing, even for a jazz
musician or a poet. Instead we
said you're pure only when you don’t exist,
this turning from wave to particle comes
with consequences and detractions and,
yes, once you arrive, you’re stuck till you’re not
here anymore, filled with that desperate
yearning for light when only mass will do.
-
Ode to a Book
Oh, book, I am afraid to ease back your
spine. You might make me sad; how can I take
another story such as the one
on your cover, all illustration? You’ll
rip out my heart or burn me so angry
I don’t sleep, which makes it hard on my kid
early in the morning when neither she
nor I want to be awake, but I’m in
charge. They write books about it. Books about
what it is not. I recognize their names
when I reach for the chewing gum. Even
at the free book give away, I drift toward
only the recipes for what’s going
in rather than the end result. Except
when I pick you up and open to the
middle, the sentences so beautiful
I’m inside an orchid jungle and do
not want the heat to stop. Forget the rug
burns on the knees or the bladder problems
afterwards; I cannot take your beauty,
worse than the ending when the words are gone.
-
Unbound as Rebound
The absence of pressure makes a twitch so
severe you think only of something else,
ignore the claim that, if unexplored, a
wound heals over just at the surface
like an abscess a cat can’t keep open with
his papery tongue. Lack of push rebounds
to encephalitic emotions like
a baby’s head grows too big after a
vaccine. Nothing to resist in the hole
which sucks you in as sure as if you had
thrown yourself there. Pump it up! we should shout
then, like a red balloon! Stretch the neck first
by pulling so you don’t feel tight in your
glands. If the rubber is good, you’ll get faint
powder on your fingers. Without breaking
blood vessels on your cheeks, exhale until
just before the point of its exploding.
-
When We Heard the News
By the time we heard, everything had been
finished with for a long time. Still, I would
pause at the rim of dusk to consider
what I imagined the sequence to have been,
how each moment sent out tendrils that wrapped
around our ankles, even mine this far
away, standing at the edge of the dock,
staring at the sky, thinking about a
plunge but suddenly afraid of what might be
at the bottom of the lake. When the news
reached us, all was already ended, the
outcome known. Nonetheless, we imagined
their struggle as if it were ongoing
because it is, carried in our pockets,
wrapped in the cellophane and tin foil of
our lunches, swallowed with the water we
yet take for granted, the trickling off the
mountains as if glaciers last forever.
-
Monday Morning
All moments are filled with the promise of regret
or possibility. Within me and without, in the
space between synapses, the invisible attraction
of opposite poles fuels a status that does not exist,
making and unmaking. The answer is not to
address but to become. Do you know what it
means when I say my ears have become as long
as my great-grandmother’s? And not for the
same reason as the Buddha’s ears are long? Each
morning I clear the path, another stone. Every
day I resolve, one more slip. I cannot help but
fall into life, called to the deep by a hand print on
a wall left by a body discovering itself absorbing
and expelling cells within cells inside a warm
cluster of organs cradled by a slick structure of
bone, covered by skin and greeting others.
How were you supposed to recognize a
vibration housed in stone? This was your first
time, the furthest you’d made it into breath
and life, twenty-one years which to you seemed
eternity but to your mother was
always a moment that went too fast, like
stepping into an elevator shaft
she knew was empty and for less than an
instant comprehending flight. Others tried
to warn you: Pick this stone, not that. What you
need now is sedimentary; forgo
metamorphic until you understand
it. We never told you to avoid the
elements you weren’t ready for, matter
not a chart but a library ladder.
Make clear it’s sturdy, we should have said. Be
sure you know all of shelf four before you
jump to shelf six because otherwise too
much will be missing, even for a jazz
musician or a poet. Instead we
said you're pure only when you don’t exist,
this turning from wave to particle comes
with consequences and detractions and,
yes, once you arrive, you’re stuck till you’re not
here anymore, filled with that desperate
yearning for light when only mass will do.
-
Ode to a Book
Oh, book, I am afraid to ease back your
spine. You might make me sad; how can I take
another story such as the one
on your cover, all illustration? You’ll
rip out my heart or burn me so angry
I don’t sleep, which makes it hard on my kid
early in the morning when neither she
nor I want to be awake, but I’m in
charge. They write books about it. Books about
what it is not. I recognize their names
when I reach for the chewing gum. Even
at the free book give away, I drift toward
only the recipes for what’s going
in rather than the end result. Except
when I pick you up and open to the
middle, the sentences so beautiful
I’m inside an orchid jungle and do
not want the heat to stop. Forget the rug
burns on the knees or the bladder problems
afterwards; I cannot take your beauty,
worse than the ending when the words are gone.
-
Unbound as Rebound
The absence of pressure makes a twitch so
severe you think only of something else,
ignore the claim that, if unexplored, a
wound heals over just at the surface
like an abscess a cat can’t keep open with
his papery tongue. Lack of push rebounds
to encephalitic emotions like
a baby’s head grows too big after a
vaccine. Nothing to resist in the hole
which sucks you in as sure as if you had
thrown yourself there. Pump it up! we should shout
then, like a red balloon! Stretch the neck first
by pulling so you don’t feel tight in your
glands. If the rubber is good, you’ll get faint
powder on your fingers. Without breaking
blood vessels on your cheeks, exhale until
just before the point of its exploding.
-
When We Heard the News
By the time we heard, everything had been
finished with for a long time. Still, I would
pause at the rim of dusk to consider
what I imagined the sequence to have been,
how each moment sent out tendrils that wrapped
around our ankles, even mine this far
away, standing at the edge of the dock,
staring at the sky, thinking about a
plunge but suddenly afraid of what might be
at the bottom of the lake. When the news
reached us, all was already ended, the
outcome known. Nonetheless, we imagined
their struggle as if it were ongoing
because it is, carried in our pockets,
wrapped in the cellophane and tin foil of
our lunches, swallowed with the water we
yet take for granted, the trickling off the
mountains as if glaciers last forever.
-
Monday Morning
All moments are filled with the promise of regret
or possibility. Within me and without, in the
space between synapses, the invisible attraction
of opposite poles fuels a status that does not exist,
making and unmaking. The answer is not to
address but to become. Do you know what it
means when I say my ears have become as long
as my great-grandmother’s? And not for the
same reason as the Buddha’s ears are long? Each
morning I clear the path, another stone. Every
day I resolve, one more slip. I cannot help but
fall into life, called to the deep by a hand print on
a wall left by a body discovering itself absorbing
and expelling cells within cells inside a warm
cluster of organs cradled by a slick structure of
bone, covered by skin and greeting others.
