3-4 Short Poems

It is what it is.

Note: I have two short poems in the latest issue of the Paris Review. You can subscribe at the link or simply order the issue here.

Three more short poems below. Thanks for subscribing.

It

It is what it is
until it isn’t

then it isn’t what it is.
It’s what it isn’t

for a brief moment,
and that can be hard

or a relief
depending on what it was

that it was. Then,
it is what it again.

I Support the Arts

A single leaf is lost in a jungle. But tear that leaf off its branch, pin it to a white background, put a frame around it, put that frame on a wall in an art gallery, and have an entire modern industrial city be around that gallery, and have suburbs around that city, and have a nation-state beyond the suburbs, and, suddenly, we see in that leaf, not only the intricacies of the form of the leaf itself, but the entire jungle we took it from, metonymized in its one little lobe. Beyond that, we glimpse, or feel that we glimpse, all of nature, and all of life, and all of history, in a way we never could have, simply by examining that one little leaf. Why? Why does it take so much decontextualization and recontextualization, to arrive at all those thoughts and feelings? Why can’t we just visit a jungle, or a park, or our own backyards, look at one of the gazillions of leaves freely available, and see it all right then without the need for mediation? Not that I’m upset. I’m certainly old enough that I should have long ago made peace with the narrow and culturally fragile circumstances under which one’s cosmic citizenship is appreciable. I suppose I’m just casually wondering. Maybe it’s even good that it’s like this, not the other way around. Who wants to appreciate things in their original context anyway? Not me, actually. Not after thinking about it for more than a moment. I like galleries. I like museums. I like the city. I support the arts. I would never be able to live anywhere else.

Track-List for a Pro-Science Country Album

1. Fact Tractor

2. Backyard Barbecue DNA

3. Outer Space Outlaw

4. Tattered Red, White, ‘n’ Blue Lab Coat

5. Whiskey in My Erlenmeyer Flask

6. Peer-Reviewed Research Rodeo

7. Southern Science

8. Gonna Whip (Climate Change’s) Ass

9. Einstein’s Moonshine

10. The Safety Is Off On My Science Shotgun

11. Vaccination Tailgate Nation

12. ABD in my PhD in Loving You

13. Reading the Bible While Riding My Horse to My Science Lab

14. F-150s on the Moons of Mars

15. Data-Driven Cattle Drive

16. Ignorance Ain’t U.S.!

17. Codin’ the Wind

🫡

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