Let y equal any number of fathers.
Let x equal the numberless planets.
Let y minus x equal long nights of fog
and let x plus y equal hydra & incubus.

If y is > x, why do all my convictions gape?
If x is > y, does “father” just mean nightcap?
When x ÷ y, we set sail on a windjammer.
When y ÷ x, watch for the banshee, the jinn.

Or let x be replaced by a midsummer night
and y by—well, you can never replace y but
by morning y will lollygag near half-moons:
Odysseus sailing to Ithaca, mildew as it rots.

And a b is no mere theory of relativity: it is
helter-skelter materfamilias, Ma Barker, and
Rebekkah, the mother who deceived. Not
Sarah who couldn’t conceive nor the Mother

of all of Nature: the black tern, the kittiwake;
plants ornamental, baroque; the cumulous,
the nebulosus; and yet, mother-of-pearl and
ice-cold, tiger’s-eye and monkey in the middle.

Let’s say a b is a % of all the love in the world
or synonymous with do you love me now that
I can dance? Let’s agree that a is the salsa or
paso doble and b is always always the beguine.

but love does not, Menelle Sebastien.
Of all the afflictions
& luck,
all the sums & paradoxes,
& gravitons that add up
to more minus
than plus,
I promise that love
is often as inconsiderate as it is just
because actual love,
I imagine,
is a wave function
that isn’t restricted
to being
in any one place
at one time.
No, love must
be a superposition
with a measurement problem,
but don’t worry,
I won’t get into alternative
realities & how a single judgement
from one can so easily
dissolve
whom,
or what,
she’s sizing up—                & yet,

                              when experts speak of capturing
vastness at such a small scale,
I can only see the passenger
pigeon
flitting into living
sequoia trees,
& every blue whale
sinking into the great
barrier
reef
& all the threats each are facing,
all these gigantic things
that beat
within the size
of a subatomic being
that is the proton,
which is not fundamental
as love
ought to be—

                            & maybe it does all
add up
to a single hush.
Like how we try to escape
what makes us human by trying
to make sense of what made us
human.
These days,
when I think on the proton,
I only observe love
as entanglement
in which we bias & sway & touch
over great,
great
distances.
But like I said,
I won’t get into it
like the quark’s fate
& all the possible quantum trickery
out there,
lying in wait.
I don’t believe hope dies
just because old measurements got it
wrong & there are no secret lives
between protons & muons
that cause the former to change
in size,
silencing all the music
that drives us
toward mystery
rather than discovery.
Maybe just thank
electronic hydrogen,
since, for now, there’s an answer,
even if it feels like a dead end—

                                                       because I’d bet everything,
                                                       that at least something began
                                                       over this:                         jounce,
                                                       butterfly & cower ::
                                                       over & oeuvre,
                                                       greedy, hunger,
                                                       & sour—

                 until aching
                 each other’s spoils,
                 stripping bare
                 their delicate
                 & deadly
                 creaking
                 coils—

1

Wyh do we udnersntad a txet eevn fi the letetrs
aer in dsiordre       

*

The letter A
like a membrane
melliferous the animal flesh
bread baking   butchery

Alphabet of blood and ash

Litanie   incantation
from the back part of her throat
salt for the stew   salt
for the bread

Sings the poet maudite

When I in my youth
strolled in a blue wool dress
I strolled in a circle
of blue

2

The reading brain    the eyes moving constantly
while reading

*

The letter B
when black letters of fire
patterns of animus across
the landscape

The place in the distance

Where the air
smells of poisoned rain
take one step after
the other

Where you do not want to go

An amalgam of words
in sequential order here where
you walk ahead   stop
raise your eyes

3

We identify only ten or twelve letters    quick jumps
three or four letters left and seven or eight letters right

*

The letter C circles
zigzags   animates the plaster
death cast   a solitary
workwoman then

From the back part of her throat

When I in my youth in a blue wool dress
I strolled among   maidens   monks
and birds   I strolled in wind 
cold and heat   

Across green volcanic hills

There In shadows   haze   smoke
in three dimensional space 
piles of charred human
and animal bones

4 

The history of the neurology of reading
the existence of a visual center

*

The letter D whispered
in the dismal quarter where
absence of a picture   the green
volcanic hills

Grain   grape   bread   wine

The story of the shepherdess
staged and scripted sub-plots  there
in a bucolic setting our lady grows
out of a mound of dirt

Her rose-bud mouth a crooked line

A breast vein as thick as a finger
the wedding feast   bread and meat 
yellow   sulfurous   a plume
of  smoke

5

Some written words lit up or hidden among
geometric forms

*

The letter E
elaborate the graphic design  
chasms and fissures
in the earth

Our lady grows out of rotting meat

Sings the poet maudite
I in my youth   concealed and disguised
walked in three dimensional
space 

Heat   cold   wind   water 

Data  science 
pain   fear   phobia   multimedia
exhibitions   photographic art   illustrations 
the ritual of baking bread

6

Yeast spores are ubiquitous in air and on
the surface of grain

*

The letter F
the preserved body rotates  forms
sweet bacteria   then the skin
of the fingertips  

Chemical     molecular   where

In a circle they joined hands 
ruiners and destroyers engulf and consume 
victims and executioners ooze out
the urge

Staged and scripted sub-plots

Genesis to revelation
in elaborate letters   shift   twist and slant
disease   famine   torture   war
earth   air   fire   water

7

Everything begins in the retina
ten years of research on the reading brain

*

The letter G a graphic design 
sight   touch   listen   the sound
of grinding corn   the smell
of bread baking

Then she brews tea over a fire

There in reddish violet light
violet light    a jagged black line zigzags
a graphic design   the head covered
with a hood  

identity unknown    tree   rope   grain

The air smells of smoked meat
his mouth waters   taste buds pulsate
from a gap   a fissure
a flow of hormonal forces

“Cerebral Cortex”

8

Begin to understand
the nature of the leavening process

*

The letter H
catches in the throat   then she steps
backwards and flings
a handful of earth beyond the edges

Of a page   you hear a hollow sound

The dry external covering
of an ear of corn   then stepping forwards
she scatters letters cut out from
the skull   spine bones

The form of a human body

When I in my youth
in a blue wool dress   I strolled
in a circle of blue
sings the poet Maudite

9

The cerebral cortex   a sliver of brain
barely thicker than a credit card

*

The letter I vertical
under an occult sky once upon
a time I sat cross-legged
in the crotch of a tree

Grape    wine   grain   bread

From roots of plants
that bear the grain in darkness
light   heat   cold   focus on
a common scene 

Chasms in the fissured earth

The story of the baker
a set of skills in sequential order
the finished loaf   A to Z
in place and space

10

Recognize in some dozens of milliseconds
a written word

*

The letter J   the shape
of a hook and on the hook

the butcher’s coat
wind   heat  cold  drought

Blood and mud flows out
of the right sleeve 

One animal
gut   head and tail   measure
body length   jaws  claws
diameters of holes

The zones of inclusion   exclusion

Salt for the stew   salt for the bread
once upon a time   my mother
was sold from me when I
could but crawl

11

Dispatches from the frontiers
of neuroscience

*

The letter K stands apart
like a barley plant
in three dimensional space
the dry external covering 

A snarl of fibrous hairs

Drifting in circles
wind   heat   cold  drought
and dead white the barley plant
cut down 

Deboned and buried

Then the reading brain
follows one letter after another
beyond the edges
of a page

One millionth one millionth of a second
an episode

On your Mark, one first O/riginal Form; Get set, a second
angular Segment; Go—the next step, a Rule replacing
each straight side in the first by the second; if I take

a box and for each side of that box substitute a cone
or peak, to make a kind of star—then do again
what I did before: take the star-box

and where I find a straight-line replace it
with a peak, to make a starrier star, nesting the shape
even deeper in the figure, re-placing

peaks to make a Star-in-the-Box! Or, a Diamond-heart-
Star at every level (a shape self-similar); a shape
of extreme complication, in only a few—in five—

iterations, it already reads as texture and is rapidly
sinking as it plummets, repeating, into bonded
lock, where photons mediate, shunting between

heavy center, vibrant orbit. Or deeper, look. No,
look, a quantum leap: the burst box—the born star—is re-
emerging on the line, on the line or/and . . . . Repeat: