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
Fact Tractor
Backyard Barbecue DNA
Outer Space Outlaw
Tattered Red, White, ‘n’ Blue Lab Coat
Whiskey in My Erlenmeyer Flask
Peer-Reviewed Research Rodeo
Southern Science
Gonna Whip (Climate Change’s) Ass
Einstein’s Moonshine
The Safety Is Off On My Science Shotgun
Vaccination Tailgate Nation
ABD in my PhD in Loving You
Reading the Bible While Riding My Horse to My Science Lab
F-150s on the Moons of Mars
Data-Driven Cattle Drive
Ignorance Ain’t U.S.!
Codin’ the Wind
🫡
I appreciate your poem. I don’t know how to radically accept what’s coming up for me in the moment. One day, I’m strongly convicted about one path and the next I’m just as convicted about another path. What do I do with that? It is what it is, and then it isn’t. I have to book flights. I have to make decisions. I have to find some thread that leads me forward into some new reality. I feel tossed about by the waves. I appreciate this poem.
"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." Great sentence.