One filched wish deserves another.
One filched wish deserves another. On
and on. They keep losing father.
A huge mistake to allow him
to roam the museum, with all
its nested rooms, little stairways, locking
lavatories. Neither is He Spirit, as
we can understand it, nor Sonship.
nor Fatherhood. Her final Christmas. Staff
has done her hair and dressed
her in a flouncy, seasonal gown;
the children, with families, surround her
bed. Here is all the holy
frivolity of those who have ceased
to be burdened with the seriousness
of themselves Their default is to
search the Bosch wing; but he’s
just as often not there. One
of these days, they’ll find his
pieces scattered in front of a
Greek sarcophagus. Neither is He of
things which are not, nor of
things which are. She sings carols
in a sweet, quavery language unknown
to any of them. I am
striving to give back the Divine
in myself to the Divine in
the All.
In tents. Squished?
In tents. Squished? Hardly. We have
to be in a desert. For
he whom we must love is
absent. During Calculus, they hold hands
across the aisle. Balance which leans
both ways at once. To calculate
such a craving. Or to crave
The Calculus. Each one a high-canopied,
many-roomed mansion, floor stretched over acres
of sand. Inside, dialogues tend toward
zero. If 1 is God, ∞
is the devil. Their oldish teacher —
with one foot in the math
grave as they say — randomly mutters,
And Yet — usually right after her
tap, tap of yellow chalk on
the board completes a word problem.
They instruct their children never to
venture past those massive canvas portals:
There’s nothing for you out there.
But then this — 1/∞.
Joel Chace has published work in print and electronic magazines such as Lana Turner, Survision, Eratio, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Golden Handcuffs Review, New American Writing, and The Brooklyn Rail. His full-length collections include matter no matter, from Paper Kite Press, Humors, from Paloma Press, Threnodies, from Moria Books, fata morgana, from Unlikely Books, and Maths, from Chax Press, and Underrated Provinces, from MadHat Books. Bone Chapel is forthcoming from Chax Press. For more than forty years, Chace was a working jazz pianist. He is an NEH Fellow.