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From: Vol.07 N.02 – Writing in the Pause

The title of this poem is Deferred

by Tyrone Williams

In the old math

of Base Lumber

 

the square root

of a two-by-four

 

is two-by-twos

of sawn timber

 

dredged up

from a flood-

 

plain nee wood-

headed vector

 

following a tangent

only up

 

to a point

on a curved

 

surface that

for all the world

 

appears flat.

Now the dispensation

 

of carbon-based

attachments to

 

intelligent

holograms

 

disabuses

future extinctions

 

of a specious

nom de plume

 

underwriting

henceforth

 

left-handedness

tilts to

 

asymmetry

browns out-blue

 

skies blue

as the blue-

 

eyed earth

watches God-

 

black holes

wink at palimpsests.

Published: October 2020
Tyrone Williams

teaches literature and theory at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of several chapbooks and six books of poetry: c.c. (Krupskaya 2002), On Spec (Omnidawn 2008), The Hero Project of the Century (The Backwaters Press 2009), Adventures of Pi (Dos Madress Press 2011), Howell (Atelos Books 2011) and As Iz (Omnidawn 2018). A limited-edition art project, Trump l’oeil, was published by Hostile Books in 2017. He and Jeanne Heuving edited the anthology, Inciting Poetics (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). His website is at http://home.earthlink.net/~suspend/

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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