David Wojnarowicz vs. Entropy – Jim Stewart
But this means
we grow farther apart
just sitting here.
So you’d think going back
in time we must have been together.
But space
was so hot then
enough to fuse new elements.
The alien head for example
represents the foreigner
the outsider. Keep rewinding
the engineer would say til it’s
close enough as
no difference. But that
won’t tell us how it was
at the start.
They say you can tell where
the parts fit together but i
never saw it. Don’t think
cause I’m soft
as an unspooled cassette i don’t
feel it a common
misunderstanding.
Christ on a stick. The ants stand
for the imperative of nature.
Think about it a wonder
we stay in one piece.
Another room
was orchids. Bright erections
end soonest. She says
you just know
where the spaces are.
Is that how the universe does it?
You can see the gaps
from back then
the wall of light between a past
hopelessly lost and the end
of our eyes’ reach.
If that map is written
on my head
my 23 chromosomes
when it all
goes
cold
just a few degrees
above
absolute nothing
how will you know
anything
happened ever?
Jim Stewart is a former Albuquerque Poetry Slam champion and graduate of Clarion West. He co-edited and designed Saint Elizabeth Street magazine and hinenimagazine.com. He has been published in In Company, New Mexico Poets after 1970, Revival: Spoken Work from Lollapalooza 94, Apex Digest, and Perihelion. He teaches programming and formal logic in New York.