MICHAEL RECTENWALD
VERTIGO
Is this the beginning
of the long, rapid
decline,
the crystals of inner
ears having swirled
along spiraling
tubes, after many shaken
nights, shoulders
twinge as I wait
in the last of three rooms
for the test results
for a vertiginous
swelter, sweat-drenched
eyes sear walls that
move as I stagger
to a spinning stop?
THE FINISH LINE
At the finish line,
the horse lay
on the track heaving,
ribs showing and caving,
slowly the breath slowing,
time slowing with it, bones poking, the white
third-world ambulance with its pathetic missionary
red cross
came tinkling with goodie bar man
bell ringing, the speculators
speculated – while the horse held
no real importance – at the horse's chances,
a 60:1 shot
up from a lesser track, nameless, run literally
to death, nobody'd
any stake in it, but the speculators,
some laughed, coughs
of cold laughter
came nervously as the horse paramedics
erected a curtain
like a hospital divider
between the dying animal
and the people, and the black curtain, like
The Wizard of Oz,
revealed bumps of men: asses
elbows, backs
fumbling about the horse, the circus
of death showed through
the faces of the handicappers, just under
the skin, the slobbering mouths, mustard
on the corners, tough ugliness, laughter just a thin curtain
between death and them.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PURE SCIENCES (1)
If space is curved
at every
point
then
there
is no point
or singularity
no number of
set discrete
units
such
that
1
is
1
&
2 is 2
and 3 is 3 …
nor do their sums
totaling x
through
infinity
exist
as
such;
but rather
only everywhere multiplicities
upon multiplicities
so that no
absolute
answers
can be
found
but
only
always more
and how
much
more no
one can possibly
know
(1) Based on a lecture by the same name given by the mathematician W.K. Clifford in 1878.
Michael Rectenwald is a professor in the Global Liberal Studies department at New York University. In addition to numerous articles on social, cultural and political theory, he is the author of Breach: Collected Poems (Apogee Publishing, 2013), The Thief and Other Stories (Apogee Publishing 2013), and The Eros of the Baby Boom Eras (Apogee Books 1991). His latest book, Springtime for Snowflakes: 'Social Justice' and Its Postmodern Parentage (New English Review Press) was published in 2018. “In another life” he was an apprentice to poet Allen Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado.