The End of Science
After the burr of your eye, soft as undergrowth
but lit through
with fluorescence; remember
I was descending a long hallway
with the tips
of my fingers lightly touching the dim walls;
it was the finished piece with its case broken open
and its bankruptcy airing
in the cold summer morning winds circling
in large drifts with their reedy vibrations
through the ruins
of the warehouse; our fraudulent reification, the
improbability of the physical, stringing the keys
we levered
from the console or ourselves a little thin and bruised,
tangled in long bands of force.
After the speech
and its adherents; after the glossary; after the know-it-all
and the caliper, the optic formula, the plating, the wave
as it lived there on paper
and the desk you had fallen through until it was
the middle of the night and I said to myself
I would go looking.
by Ryo Yamaguchi
Ryo Yamaguchi is the author of The Refusal of Suitors, published by Noemi Press in 2015. His work has appeared in journals such as The Iowa Review, Tin House, American Letters & Commentary, and Barrow Street, among others. He lives in Chicago where he works at the University of Chicago Press. You can visit him at plotsandoaths.com.
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