I wish I could sense those extra dimensions,
Like the arthritic coral curled in my hip,
Chipping away at the cartilage of Carthage,
Sinking ships between Scylla and Charybdis,
Propping a mountebank suffete on a blue chair
As Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.
They camped around fires telling tales, cold.
Ibuprofen slips its knives into the ivory tusks,
And suddenly we sleep, our animal snorts
Not interrupting the dream we share, pain-
Lessness, the ability to run down Cat Mountain
So at bottom we exceed the speed of light,
Burst into the new day as if we were red again.
Obrst, Leo. 2018. The Red Ontology of String Theory. Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, 18.2, 2018, p. 95. Southeast Missouri State University Press. http://www.semopress.com/. James Brubaker, editor. Jenny Yang Cropp, poetry editor.
