Solve for X
And in the outer world, the first, something smooth and wet. An
X
skims across the tops of the crests in a succession of skips. The
longest
holds its space in the air, pauses, then descends into what is a cool
sleep.
X and all the faces of backlit animals gaze downward at you. Their
curious engulfed
silhouettes. A spasm of radio and the accident of understanding
what it means to be X. What it means to be held and kissed and
gibbered to
as though you were something cast away and suddenly,
miraculously, returned.
Copyright © 2017 by Oliver de la Paz. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 16, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Solve for X’ is part of a sequence of poems about my son who’s on the autistic spectrum. I’ve been attempting to understand the way he perceives the world and I’ve been using cause and effect models as poetic templates. Word problems requiring the mathematician to solve for an unknown, thus, have become a metaphor for how we negotiate our relationship as father and son.”
—Oliver de la Paz
Oliver de la Paz
Oliver de la Paz is the author of five poetry collections, including Boy in the Labyrinth (University of Akron Press, 2019). He is a founding member of Kundiman, and will be the Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day in October 2019.