Tuesday poem #42 : Susan Briante : THE PHYSICISTS SAY THE UNIVERSE MIGHT BE

a projection on the edge of a screen shadows by the door
or the boundary between the Muskogee and Cherokee nations
more nothing than anything else
smash the smallest parts to see if nothingness breaks
but there must be another way there’s no reason
in the cosmic order to necessitate human existence
no equation to explain the little arrows
at the end of my fingers—a plate glass above all that I do
and you hold the grease pencil and you move the shipping containers
across the horizon like a sentence about to be said: this morning
I saw the word “dog” in a hair left in the bathtub
and no matter how I turned could not get it to read “god”

Susan Briante is the author of Pioneers in the Study of Motion and Utopia Minus, both published by Ahsahta Press. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan