Ode to Rosalind Franklin
I have three letters D, N and A
I believe in them
but there is more
than flat symbol
acronyms and chemicals
there was more to life
I was more of life
I was both atoms and window eaves
I was both pattern and matrix
but I was more sill than cell
more fascicle than fascia
I believe in particles colliding
strains, mosaics, spirals
It can be like a mother hamster
eating its own small pink babies
I believe science
has some sums,
and a little of the authority
that wrests in truth
but you can’t begin explanation
hypothesis, method
without words
And are words true?
We make ourselves with them
despite not anything
Origin
I begin in the cervical atlas
(when it’s all ending)
my selves assemble involuntarily
days were splitting
merging, reforming like cells
multiplying to malignancy
shedding off death skin
the alphabet biology began
my next words made a little girl
buskers snatched and dragged her
to a dragon tail swinging, a crowd looked on
as she screamed, I am in the third
womb world, the womb swimming
words are red, read again
misspelled, immersed in water
the headwaters of time
time was made of swimming tests
floating through her grandmother's house
the rafters filled with cartoon faces
flooded to the brim
who are we, these little girls? the cervical
axis, sequences made
rearranged around her mirror
twin, someone else lives in her books now
(but sunflowers are still in the alley)
Head Lines
I spend my time
sewing word order into
salad days and circling turns
of phrase in already read
yellowed newspapers
in the third womb I learned to read
black, white, red above the fold
the tempo of the once new
news is forgotten daily
my next-door neighbor died
after I slept walked to his front door
he was reading a newspaper
every time I saw him
the markings embedded on my face:
who, what, when, where,
and why
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