I’m going to be reading at the Tiburon-Belvedere Library this Thursday, the 17th, at 7 pm. Mostly, I’m going to read new work. I’ve been writing some prose poems inspired by Carlo Rovelli’s wonderful books on physics. I’m including one here. But you can also see some of my older work (and some interesting work by others) at this site, created by Beate Sigriddaughter.
Here’s the prose poem:
Lying on the massage table at the mudbaths
after 12 minutes immersed in a tub of hot volcanic mud and 12 minutes in a bath of hot mineral water my heart thumps against the padded surface and I remember that I have a heart that I am a thermodynamic system that chugs along with little conscious thought blood in blood out every artery vein tiny capillary breathe in leafy oxygen and breathe out CO2 and I understand with my hot pumping body that we exist in relation to every other thing that we weave together a universe of beginnings and endings in a ever changing reality composed of individual particles that know nothing of heat or up or before or tomorrow that what I call self is inextricable from the body here on this table the flannel blanket absorbing particles of me as I slowly cool the new age music bothering my sensibility like a persistent gnat the laugh track last night on the episode of Friends the forgotten French vocabulary and Pythagorean Theorem the anxieties waiting to swarm when I return to my usual state every encounter and memory since my small hot self emerged on this planet till the engine finally stops and I cool for good and the cells of me transform into earth ash air as my spirit into yours as you read these words