The Boundaries of Science

by Christopher Ankney

We are earthbound lovers suffocating from the gravity
of earthbound situations: so I confess to terrible thoughts: snapping

rude necks, stabbing myself in the eye with a fork; testing the boundaries of the electric fence
that is our bodies: our nervous
systems.

I confess to watching strangers through glass
and holding stares until everyone looks down at their feet.

I confess to the cow’s eye senior year, empty sight,
the cornea peeled: the delicate stream
of vitreous humor into metal tray puddle: nothing away from its body

but salt water: a harbor: a gulf of vision: a hurricane tossing cones
and rods: capsizing
the monotony of the scientific method.

All of it: I confess: a thunderbolt of anger in punching the blind
driver’s car and spitting on his plates: for his reminding me

how pliant a life: a love is:

I confess that we are compatible contradictions: peg and peg hole: temper
and temper: lit flare and salty ocean: the rib and rib eater; the robin
the owl.

We are a March night spent in a tent, frosted by a dying season: the doe the buck
at the forest edge, waiting for the earth to bury the cold.

We are the rivers joined at the fort.
We are readers of the sky. And even if we scatter

to the stars,
isn’t it likely that we may take our problems with us
or find, later, that they have followed us?

You who opens a book and reads like the hare: but damns the tortoise
for each worded step: you who will open your mouth and snap

with the jaw of the tortoise:
but choke out a fire with sand when it snaps

at your skin: your beautiful, earthly skin.
Your beautiful, earthly eyes: mouth: mind

---

To visit with Christopher Ankney, click here.

To read more poetry, click here.