SHADOWGRAPH 141: TO TRACE OUT A SHALLOW FIGURE
(poetry detected in douglas osheroff’s nobel physics lecture, 1996)
news to them! ‘worlds just waiting/to be discovered.’ (school: children
passing.) ‘the lower we go, the cooler we get…’ (the arctic circular.)
when i married my results… beckett, ‘waiting the
verdict!’ big fish, god caught/in one mind. (the crusade against the
holy!) conscientious objectifiers. the texas death rose. (the soiled rich.)
‘old bellows;’ california screaming… (red ivory.)
‘violent shift,’ florida to oklahoma… (magnetic rape.) ‘unsolved,’ the
cold case/of you. the emperor’s new jersey. (the grinch who stole
isness.) ‘heart beating,’ the tiny diagram… hightech-
tonics. (‘then let them eat plates!’) ‘genius?’ eve ribbing adam...
thinking man, the bird with worms. (mind the squirrel/in the lab!)
murder on the occident express. the veteran: ‘park bench,
i’m staring/at the cans at my feet…’ within reason—shallow grave. ‘all
together;’ yes, we are all residuals… lab book, 11:58 p.m., ‘giving birth to
a big mother!’ ‘adrenaline,’ suddenly, re-
cognizing the signature…
Author’s Bio
SEAN HOWARD is the author of Local Calls (Cape Breton University Press, 2009) and Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2011 & 2014).