You passed the rigor of bicycle days,
coaster brakes waiting behind package stores,
ifs, ands, buts triangulating the derivatives
barely visible through the brushstrokes,
armatures buckling under symbols shape-shifting
with wait staff, your chalk drawn and ready . . .
The mathematicians of your half-life
are talking their way
through the axioms on Knife's Edge
the conjectures at Herring Cove
the theorems along the Hudson
hustling you past
the rentals, the SROs, condos, two-families,
the faces in the windows of doublewides
reflecting the ambiguity of your words . . .
Your rewrite fills an amphitheater with iterations
of the same person . . . a stranger . . .
You were told this would happen, yes? . . .
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| Antonio Palmerini |