KATE GREENE
CYCLOTRON POEM
FROM THE RIVER, BY A SWIMMING HOLE, DAYS AFTER,
JUST OUTSIDE NEVADA CITY, CA
What do you know about elements,
an arboreal-concrete bunker, a blanket made of lead
Follow a breadcrumb beam line back to the source my little grapefruit squeeze
Punctuated lids on and near ripples
Is it gold or is it Formica of the eye
A several universe
A several cave
A several pit full
Wait, when do we get to darling
And was it the cyclotron that did the eating
A send down to an everlasting cheeseburger meal
Tomorrow is for disco
And a weighty, transparent crystal stopper
Breaking what it is said to fix
| top |
*** ** ***
FROM THE DAY TOUR
Soccer analogy’s gonna need a bigger loop
How do you know
Looking for the exquisite molecule, you, my darling, are an exquisite molecule, a particule, consecule, logicule, a unit of universe plus a unit of space the universe takes up under its speedier greedier expansion,
hiding behind the corner that is a question
that is a beautiful device
In case of emergency punch those three buttons okay
| top |
*** ** ***
FROM A SHEET OF PAPER I FOUND IN MY POCKET WEEKS LATER
Am I hollowed out by the cyclotron or do I just need to eat a nondonut
Too bad, too poem
:all the events or the ice ball,
an ice bandage for the valley coils and those who love war biographies
What are your dreams, beam
Have I implanted myself successfully
Last I saw you you told me about your crush and its strength as if we were competing
Did you win
All this radiation is invisible it doesn’t leap over doors or into cars, not at this rate,
he heard a mouse in the line but do we believe ghosts
After all what’s solid and what’s a cot
No one saw us, privacy
Why the empty,
Windows yawn our possibility,
some kind of wrap-around balcony
If a non-impulse is a kind of impulse then a negative cube, an enduring cube, is still a cube you pessimist
Grass between toes at long last
| top |
*** ** ***
FROM THE NIGHT
The block is a wall in a crack and a light: orange or amber
An inner library of endings and issue voltage
is everywhere and this catwalk
dosimeter tickles minor
actors finger
puppets hamstrings
A flashpoint
Rooms dropped in the middle of a place
What is this room doing here unattached to other rooms why are there so many
midcentury modern oscilloscopes
I wanted to gauge your potential response so I said a thing that wasn’t the thing
To be near you and a little gentle collar tug
Moths-for-moths, the personals flutter
Between us is ten feet of concrete, something blocking and am I grateful
I am grateful!
Oh, a lie
is the reason for this party, a reason to live
And every few seconds a chime languorous and pink
the way it holds its tone
lingering after you’re done looking at it eyeball to eyeball
What is a love letter inside a cyclotron
The way that it just stays there a bendy heart with its secret notes
High rate of dream appearances
Congratulations you
out astral all the rest
Out of a cockpit or a passenger seat
there are no airplanes unless there are radio poems
Fixes for futzy valley coils
Writing you from a small dark room with three screens and racks of electronics, wires hanging
down like hair over a face
What a kind of face!
All knotty and painful to comb (the hair):
this is a cyclotron and I like it?
I’d estimate three times a week, maybe more
Not willing to wake up too soon either
| top |
*** ** ***
FROM THE MORNING AFTER
Good morning particle accelerator!
Good morning love
I followed you all night
Your beam through my eyes
Through heart, fingers upon skin
Your flesh, mine, turning breath
On both sides, breath through vent
Slow and dry, the morning footsteps
The padding downstairs as if
Any of us could make it, the turning
Sky, as if we could see it together, forms
Its one-or-the-other, you bend
My hand your rib my beam
Is a continuous particle landmark.
We ungain our purpose as it is
Morning! And you are walking away!
| top |
*** ** ***
| top |
*** ** ***
| top |
KATE GREENE
Kate Greene is a poet and essayist living in New York City.
(Author Photo by Dia Felix)
To download a printable PDF version of this page, click here.
| top |
A Dozen Nothing 