Bird and Invisible Ropelike
1.
“nothing”:
or invisible) ropelike?
did it exist, the “void”?— for Epicurus,
such emptiness was obvious: but
“Nature abhors” verschwinden (vanishing)
“the mundane study of air pressure as a turning point in our study of Nature”
[John D. Barrow]
in place of nothing, Aristotelians proposed
an invisible ropelike structure, funiculus
(Latin funis, rope) (what birds travel through, then)
always dudes discussing the void (I barely noticed):
an insistence: “there must be some emptiness for objects to travel through,” and
“otherwise nothing would happen” (does anyone really believe...?)
collisions, naturally,
knocking boots (never ending) (in her mind) (linked,
adhering with unperceived joints)
so it’s our world, but kind of perforated...
“it seems that the particles somehow breathe their colors away” [Lucretius, trans. Slavitt]
Die Logik erfüllt die Welt logic fills the world [Wittgenstein]
“Wrong!” (this has been my education)
a necessary consequence of atomism, itself an argument so evident he
“actually, it’s only the valence quarks in the nucleus we have to count;
everything else is popping in and out of existence like one raging party”
the purity of nothing, the imperfection of something [in its “place”]
(no such thing as “place” anymore?)
I can’t keep track...
what does fill the world? (meiner Welt) my world:
at day’s end, I mean— bodies clashing, solid, firm
there are bodies the eyes cannot discern:
acted out—
(confused things)
2.
“This is how birds think,” “or at least how [X] thinks,
imagining [her]self to be a bird.”
a sentence stops her
refuses economy of
(“how [X] birds think”)
imagines
aims right at it,
(how [X] thinks, (“that comma!”)
[while] imagining...)
each piece of itself
precise in:
o almeno così ragiona,
ou du moins ainsi rainsonne [X],
o por lo menos así razona,
the surface of a thought how, in altered states you glide over
(manic, high),
a layer of thought
skip the heuristics, as in: skip the skipped (steps)
the sport of winds thoughts slip
through fingers
Greek heuriskein ‘find’:
a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal,
or rational,
but sufficient
[at least] for approximation
(provisional, arbitrary
(in our world such distinctions
were always
)how do they?) (how do they think, I mean
(I suppose that’s irrelevant, but perhaps of interest...
imagining herself
immaginandos: uccello, [X]
s’imaginant oiseau
imaginándose pájaro, [X]
Jessica Reed’s work has appeared in Quarterly West, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, North American Review, Bellingham Review, New American Writing, Scientific American, Waxwing, Pank, Inverted Syntax, Exposition Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Fourth River, Diagram, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist, semi-finalist, or nominee a few times: her chapbook, World, Composed (Finishing Line Press), was a finalist for the Etchings Press Whirling Prize, and her newer manuscripts came close at Omnidawn, Quarterly West, and the Cleveland State University First Book Prize. She’s been a nominee for Pushcarts, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. She has an MFA in poetry and a BS in physics, and has taught science poetry in Saudi Arabia, China, and elsewhere. She teaches a seminar at Butler University on physics and the arts. She grew up across the US, from the Mojave Desert to the Chesapeake Bay, and now lives next door to her parents in rural Indiana with her husband, solar panels, worm composting, and chickens.
Find her on social media @jreedscipoet, or at https://www.jessicareed.info/.