ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Two Poems
by Stefi Weisburd


Earth, On Loan to Another Institution

Spinewart. Windhound
terrifying rabbit leaves, this
gust feels up window seals

and snot-colored sky before
a tornado lets down
its pants. I've never

hidden in a closet from
a howling but
in L.A. I've felt

the earth heave
and settle like a luxury
liner, felt the reverb of Earth's

machinations, its little
demigod continents spreading
the legs of oceans as if

upwelling were love. Life
without sunlight
survives, even scorched

by our lack
of understanding & stinking
of sulfur. Sea night

holds a pencil
in its teeth, eraser
wiping out the theory of

light. Nevertheless,
look at us trying
to explain the iron

gizmo of our planet. Humans
are a crustal nuisance,
itching up

the repose of sediments;
we're oil leeches,
desecrating shale, setting

barns on fire in prairies. Such
wreckage makes us Mars bait
for sure, makes us fold

inward to study
the galaxy's plexus
from the inside, always

this habit of
extrapolating from fixed
points, emoting

probes into outthere
in search of our DNA's
echo. We're no quickfish

of kindness, taking core
samples like bone marrow
from Antarctica, upending

microbe nests in icebergs. Our
words bark off
the neodymium page & rattle

like pockets full
of bullets. No
wonder the lion's

share of biomass throws
its petroleum cocktail
parties where it all

began, in rock, miles
under ground,
where sightings

of our mosquito
velocities are merely
the long toxic reveries

of oxygen, unbound.



Field Trip To A Dangerous Mind

Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos, NM, home of the atomic bomb


Mr. X's brain resembles a mushroom cloud in a jar. Just now it's unjarred
and pinkish, skulking on its tray. The fifth graders in the Science Theater
masticate this tidbit of data while surveying the weather in their stomachs.

Mr X's brain donated itself to the museum in 1987, says Ms. Fermi,
educational consultant. Now that the brain's unclassified, she can divulge
that Mr. X was a cold war sales rep.

Mr. X's spinal cord resembles a ponytail of long pink spaghetti. Ms. Fermi
lifts his eyeballs with a popsicle stick.

One by one the children hold Mr. X's brain. Not realizing it's a dud, some
kids faint in a chain reaction. Others think it's yet another memo from the
Office of Cooties Management.

Simultaneously, with Dillon C's hands coddling his cerebellum, Mr. X
misplaces the atomic formula for ________.

Ms. Fermi warns that smooth brains are too big for their skulls and may fall
for optical tricks as Sarah S. soon discovers for herself when her worksheet
morphs into a five ton Fat Man.

Ms Fermi leaves the class with this thought: Women have more daisy chains
linking left to right hemis. The women chaperons smug. Who knows what will
happen when the two halves touch - light! or annihilation!