INERTIA VIOLATED
It is catalogued in the book of lies.
It is stated categorically in the introduction
and nuanced in experimental method.
You are an ageless battery.
You are a perpetual motion machine.
Yet the sky, the dirt, the galaxy
red shift away from you.
You are brine and bone, the quicksilver
of what you want but can never have.
You are firebrand and dancer.
A concoction of expanding energy.
Yet you are an unbalanced equation.
An inexorable flux, a dandelion
unhinged and vectoring in parabola.
Here I am and here you are.
We could be the wild siphoning night
extracting blue for its black swan sonata.
Or we could be the epiphany of sleep,
the soft tap dance of touching toes.
—from Rattle #49, Fall 2015
Tribute to Scientists
__________
Edward Nudelman: “I’m a cancer research scientist by trade. One day in the laboratory while homogenizing human liver tumors in chloroform and methanol, the metal canister bumped and the whole concoction hit me in the face and arms. Recovering in the ER (with no lasting damage, thank goodness), lightly sedated but fully conscious, I could overhear our lab head explaining to another coworker that it looked pretty bad for me. This prompted a poem creatively entitled, ‘Lab Accident,’ which later made it into my first published collection of poems.” (website)
