The Math
Thank you for your language, Adele Thusnelda
Thank you for the pilgrimage you took
Into the dust to give me food
My body flapping like a flag
Life’s edges are predicted
There is length, there are species
It is clear that hearts have stems
A chorus of queens is interrupted by a peasant
While you hid your port-wine stain
Always turning to the left
I sat and pursed memory’s stench like a lip
I tried to name myself and failed
Thank you for your love, Adele Thusnelda
This was the math
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Carolyn Zaikowski is the author of the novel A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013) and the forthcoming In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, Entropy Magazine, Eleven Eleven Journal, Sententia, Nebula: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Scholarship, and elsewhere. Find her at http://www.liferoar.wordpress.com/
Incessant Pipe 