Up late scrolling
for distraction, love, hope,
I discovered skew dice.
In the promotional video
you see only a mathematician’s hands,
like the hands of god,
picking up the dice one at a time,
turning them over and over
before returning them
to the hard wood table,
where each lands with something
between a whoosh and silence,
face up, face down,
some faces lying on their side,
as at other archaeological sites.
I bought a set of the patented dice,
each with its own logic and truth
and aleatory uncertainty—
at home alone I rolled them
across my dining table
to pass the time,
and time with its own logic
passed. Dear god.
I haven’t been touched in so long.
Copyright © 2022 by Catherine Barnett. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 29, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.