a measure of control

a poem written during the summer of 2021 Kenyon Writers Workshop and revised over the many months that followed; rediscovered in my near-bottomless well of poetry that has never been published

bad_french

A post shared by @bad_french

1.
we measure what we cannot 
otherwise conceive

the distance between my son’s daily need
for control, and the time it takes
for a star to die

give me a dial for him to turn up
and up
	a map of the sky 13 billion years ago
we‘ll work out the equations
we’ll have a plan for meltdowns
	mid-flight
we’ll write whole books 
on the genetic imprint of trauma
a book of flowers pressed
and passed down in their frailty
launched unceremoniously into the ether

all of it at least a measure
	contrived
all of it in the same breath
useful = the capacity to bridge 
our most basic misunderstandings

the way we don’t believe the death
of a star until we see it with our own eyes

2.
a boy
in the shape of an apple
on the floor
his one finger
pointing up
the stem

pointing up as if a beacon
a slight line towards
a star already dead

the boy no longer
an apple
except here
in this poem

3.
Be it resolved that a boy
in the shape of an apple
whose stem aligns, surely
with the death of some star
is hereby safe

Be it resolved that a boy
in the shape of a chair
legs quaking in time
is hereby 
forever

Be it resolved that apples
are eaten, chairs sat upon
and every bolt of lightning
hereby 
a garden in waiting
of mushrooms

4. 
Tell me what you know of this life

your control panel measurements
your guiding hands steady and assured
towards—

how you can possibly reconcile this myth 
with the apple
the chair
the ache in the mothers back 
as she looks toward dead stars
dreams of a boy growing
into the love they were 
just barely
born into

bad_french

A post shared by @bad_french