ditch,

Gail Gray, grew up in Lowell, Mass but now lives in Greenville, SC, USA. She is the author of three books of poetry, The Hazard of Waking Up, Spirals in Copper, and Planetary Tension. She is the owner of Shadow Archer Press and the editor of Fissure, a magazine of experimental art and writing. Her poetry has been published or is upcoming in The Asheville Poetry Review, Counterexample Poetics, Deep Tissue Magazine, Cokefish, Exquisite Corpse, Eviscerator Heaven, Being, Big Swollen Toe, Sisyphus, Zygote Abstract Libertine, Gloom Cupboard, Main Street Rag, sein und werden, Clockwise Cat, Shoots and Vines, and the anthology, America! www.shadowarcherpress.com          http://www.myspace.com/fissuremagazine       

The Ribbon Effect

As all accelerates, physicists crack
theorems quick as whips,
as do poets with the Logos.

Artists’ compositions
yearn. Fragments coalesce.
The innards of atoms
                  compelled to connect…
fling questions like slingshots,
faster than the Haldon Collider
splits and smashes
diverse arts: seeds towards the whole;

the encompassing universe within
a complex   
             craving…
misled in seeking answers
when the answer lies 
                      in our craving
                           to be known 
                                    by one.

“Forget naïve reality,” quantum
scientists warn, “consciousness
does more than observe.”
The fractal messages contort
to awareness
    response of grandeur…
                          an elegant design. 
Paint, notes,
words and numbers
invoke the numinous…
                                     grace in a moment;
or all of time combined.
The sublime attempts to stroke 
                                  the cheek of Eros.
A child is born
                 knowing;
owns it all once again
                             twirling….
                                  holding ribbons
                                           overhead.

Boston Garden Rumble

Her face in the train window
was not her face. Even
                 before pulling out of 
North Station
she recognized the difference
even before she saw Munch’s Scream
                                                   stolen twice
Oslo unaware Greenville’s Charles Townes
booked a date with a laser.

It was the first time
she’d misjudged
                                 trains sponsored parades
                                 worlds ripping apart
as each near miss clacks clacks
to the wrong time on the wrong rock
                                the fate she’d chosen.
It was never a multiple choice option.

The other passengers didn’t notice
                               sealed off breathing sulfur
                               or blowing pomegranate kisses
into personal Halloween villages
the Logan’s Run voice
                              obliterating
the sky’s hissy fit
where some think God lives

But she knows better
having watched the smudge of him
                 scampering along the tracks
hauling bits of books & pigments,
minor musical notes, atomic numbers
wrapped up in his hoodie, tied
                                                         with red string.

She thinks he forgot where
he stashed this world's secrets.