Included Arcs, An Ode to the Hatter

133 I saw two suns side by side in the sky, one a circumzenith arc with a green gold like the hatter’s eyes, one pupil dilated. We were thinking about things that begin with arch, architecture, archeology, apsis, as in the making of a wheel, the first museum, the ark of the flood, the arcs where priests kept the likes of Galileo, our relics, testimony to our existence, bones, a broken cup whose ridge survives, evidence of the whole, the moon a splinter, arc that holds the whole secret, like the rainbow smile, and the bull’s blood tracing its route along the floor. We were steering a course toward the sublime, by way of beauty, knowing a laboratory could study a slice, knowing the curve dictates the whole way around, if this is all we have. This calculus side of geometry can build your face with the bowl of your skull. You can wish on an eyelash. On his deathbed my grandfather told the children around his bed that he was going to take a long walk. He was going to talk to Job. The whole world from this sliver of eulogy. I rose without rising , soared without flying. It was true. INCLUDED ARCS, AN ODE TO THE HATTER MICHELLE MITCHELL-FOUST 134 We thought about things that begin with vault: archenemy, apsis, spandrel, the triangular space between the other curves of an arch, tool for winding the spring of a wheel-lock firearm, fornication and camera and cave. What if murderers put their work in the sky instead, so that when we look up, the dead span in a tree—as in the old native American way, or up in the attic— oh, here you are, with the green flies lighting your face, an injury like the busted red star on the barista’s arm on your cheek: it’s spring and the trees in Santa Ana hang with shiny bags of cotton candy for sale; see also the center of this circle on the board, the pull of the sublime, the collective unconscious, creator whose central angle has the same measure as its included arc, because, as Pilar said in class, the arc is part of the whole story, the evidence, the roof of your mouth itching with it. ...