Editor's Note
Selena Spier’s poems employ a register that is technical and scientific to explore ideas that are quite personal. In ‘Ampersand’, dedicated to poet Anthony Thomas Lombardi, the idea of eigenstates is introduced. An eigenstate, in quantum mechanics, is defined as the state of a quantum system with a fixed value for one particular observable quantity. In the poem, the reversal of the fortunes of the speaker and the ‘you’ is the fixed value of the eigenstate that the poet speculates about. Through this speculation, we are introduced to the fortunes and misfortunes of the pair. This device reminded me of episodes in sitcoms that explore the alternate possibilities of the trajectories the characters’ lives would have taken, had they made different choices.
I invite our readers to partake in the joy of exploring these worlds through Spier’s fine-tuned lens.
— Aswin Vijayan
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Ampersand
for Anthony Thomas Lombardi
other eigenstates exist & in some of them you’re the one who pulls the long straw & it’s you coming over to help me break down boxes in my new apartment after the divorce & i’m the one with the neck tattoos & existential vertigo & penchant for ampersands & it’s pictures of my dead mom on the fridge & i’ll walk into the kitchen to find you looking at them & i’ll tourniquet my arms around your waist & you’ll say you know she kind of looks like patti smith meaning not her face exactly but something about her expression the way she’s gazing into the lens as if she could fold herself into a pinprick of infinite density & crawl inside the aperture & it’s you telling me how the infinite is nestled inside the infinitesimal the way a hypersphere radiates outward & into its own center & it’s me always looking over your shoulder at something you can’t see & it’s you fingering abacus beads like a rosary & you calculating the odds of the big bang singularity not collapsing into a black hole but unfolding into a universe that contains this room & everything in it the copy of franny & zooey with my dead friend’s notes in the margins & the cat asleep in your lap or is it mine or is it ours & all the pill bottles crowding the nightstand & the amy winehouse bobbleheads & the heap of empty cardboard boxes & their formerly indeterminate contents & i’ll call god what you call order & you’ll call objects provisional fictions & i’ll cite rilke & his terrible angels & you’ll dismiss all superstitions except for the dime-store madonna you’ve taken to wearing on a piece of string around your neck & to which you attribute your unforgivable luck though she never speaks or heats up at critical moments just watches disapprovingly from in between your breasts on spring nights when i undress with the curtains open
The Copenhagen Interpretation
Because they can’t transpose a sphere
onto a plane without distortion. Because
the distance between continents
can only be preserved at the expense of
their dimensions—that’s the Mercator projection.
Because preserving the dimensions yields
the homolosine’s bloated oceans,
a clementine rind flattened on a plate.
Because we exist inside that plane.
Because I fed breadcrumbs through the rungs
of my crib, thinking I could use them
to find my way back into the labyrinth.
Because the patterns they make now
seem incomprehensible. I don’t know
where they lead, or if indeed
they lead anywhere. A bird in the hand
or perched on a branch or otherwise
untenable. Because a labyrinth could fail
in one of two dimensions: either every path
leads to the center, or the center is
inaccessible. Because every preposition
is a door. Because the empty tracts of paper
in the margins of the atlas are labeled
sleeping beauties—ladies, tigers—
as if either could exist
without a witness.
Brigadoon
And what are these same evanescent Increments? They are neither finite Quantities nor Quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?
—George Berkeley, The Analyst
It must happen less than once in a lifetime.
He marked my height on the doorframe
in soft lead. I lingered on the threshold
after he’d finished, wanting to hold it
somehow: his fingertips grazing the crown
of my head, his hoarse voice whispering
hold still, the uncountable infinities within
each bounded interval. Like a Cantor set.
How we kept time on the passenger trains
that hurtled past his bedroom window
every sixteen minutes. The scrap of silk
he tied around the handle of my suitcase.
He told me that chess doesn’t start
until the middlegame, after a sacrifice
or an exchange. But I loved the openings best:
the Ruy Lopez, the Caro-Kann. We’d give up
space in the center just for the chance to play
en passant. It must happen less than once
in a lifetime—every hundred years or so,
like Brigadoon. But it happened to us.
I was there. I saw it. I felt it. There was
a glass of strawberry milk left to curdle on
the nightstand. There was a chess set on the floor
beside the bed, worn and missing pieces: two pawns
and a bishop. It had belonged to his father once.
There were pennies to denote the pawns, a thimble
for the bishop. In his child’s hand he’d scrawled
the numbers and letters on the edges.
Lux Perpetua
So I became
a metaphor for myself,
looping the tea-bag string
twice around the handle
of his mug, husbanding
half-spent packets
of flower food.
I mend, I make amends. I fix,
I fix, I fixate. Attention
is the thread
that spins the web in which
I’ve found myself entangled.
And the objects I’ve been taught to love,
to hoard: levers on the switchboard,
hemming pins to keep the seams straight.
In these dim, suggestive mornings
every object is a Rorschach:
see how the cast iron pan on the gas range
dilates like the pupil of some colossal eye.
And the pilot light inside the oven,
flickering beneath the wire rack—
that must be the mind.
Acknowledgments
Image credits: Rafael Araujo. Morpho Sequence. Reproduced here with the permission of the artist.
There’s a long and honourable tradition of artists who work at the intersection of art and science. Rafael’s lovely creations live in this magical realm where we can not only appreciate but also comprehend. He has a special interest in the golden ratio. We chose his butterfly series because it fit, but there were many other candidates we would have chosen just as happily. Dear reader, you’re not so constrained. Check out other works by the artist on his website: www.rafael-araujo.com.
Author | SELENA SPIER
SELENA SPIER is a poet living in New York City. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Sixfold, New York Quarterly, and The Threepenny Review.