Ontology
- Ontology
The window frame goes popshirking the cold of the night,
a brand new crackin the fundamental code.
Emptiness is highly unstable.An earthquake, an aftershock,
a startle response—random flux is all it takes.
Hair-triggered, neuralgiasends a metal zip down my spine,
chronic, seismic.California forks at the fault-line
while in the lacy dendritesof my sympathetic nerve,
impulses fire as faithfullyas any branch of mathematics.
Tined, ionized, they breachthe ethereal frequencies,
proof of a small godwith a high tolerance for tedium. [End Page 181]
Mary Peelen is the author of Quantum Heresies (Glass Lyre Press 2019). Her poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Antioch Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry Review (UK), Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.
