Poetry

Felix Lupa

By

Matt Alexander

Ray Tracing

Mirrors make objects appear larger

than they really are. The ones on cars lie.

We perceive nothing clearly by looking directly at it; take the sun.

There’s a lens in the way that bends the light

toward a pit in the middle. Climb in. The fovea

receives love, death, and refracted beams through permeating methane; all one in the same.

Let me draw you a diagram and we’ll trace the rays together

until the sun comes up again. Hopefully it’s still orange, or at least a banana

or strawberry; a bath bomb to bathe in the fizzles when it finally crests.

Then we can see what we’ve done.

The Neutered Polis of Our Efforts

Have you learned nothing from the pop-economic tome du jour? Have you not learned to read French? Thomas Piketty? The podcast circuits are shorting themselves over it. Inequality makes small men of the tiny, which makes me glad to be a Titan. An uncontested reign drains the joy like a world with no pain. John Lennon was a fucking idiot, though.

And yet. And yet.

So we come to the circle, whose shape is defined by the single scalar value of the radius, from which we can move centripetally and perpetually, thus gathering no moss while simultaneously rocking with our cocks out and feeling the heavily doped wind in our CrossFit faces. Thus, I give you the dynamic status quo and the neutered polis of our efforts. Has it been demonstrated? Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?

Matt Alexander

Matt Alexander is a scientist and writer in Philadelphia. When struck by insight, he shouts “Bazinga!”, not “Eureka!”, although he has nothing against Archimedes and is in fact himself an avid bath-taker. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, After the Pause, and Clockwise Cat. Follow him on Twitter at @thenamesmatta.