The 2019 Online Issue Two
Whose Form Is Delocalized
Jessica Reed
Self is the structure that opposes, and does not strictly exist. A specific ionic bond between specific
pairs of ions, about which we can never speak. Speak only of the solid, of the whole crystal. There
are rules. Self is a forbidden category of being, a figment based around where we spend most of our
time. I can speak this way because I am under glass: I can lie, inhabit other voices, contradict. I can
listen. Pretend. And you, of course, do not exist — you are a projection:
I think of you when I think of dew point, the way blackberries and ripe & abundant combine and then
disappear. Properties, but not the “orangeness of,” only emission lines in the spectra of heated
elements. Time dilation in Beijing. July atmosphere and the nausea of three codeine taken on the
plane. After a week passed, my husband said I didn’t smell like myself. No I, only the new spatial
properties of a hybridization. An optimum distance, a minimum energy point. A lesson in how one
kind of matter is filled with another, and easily astonished. The euphoria of vomiting and a
temperature above which appetite begins to transpose and what any of it amounts to when you can
defensibly claim that nothing happened.
Toe-curling orgasms in your absence. Goldfinch and cloud chamber and a disagreement about
porcelain babies with nails in their skulls. I can’t help but notice the undersides of leaves, the way the
tree halves precisely in the wind. Its whiteness underneath. Exposure, and then: a canceling.
Jessica Reed 's chapbook, World, Composed (Finishing Line Press), is a dialogue with the ancient poet Lucretius about atomism. Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, Bellingham Review, Diagram, PANK, New American Writing, Waxwing, 111O, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Spiral Orb, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry and a BS in physics, and she teaches a university seminar on physics and the arts. She was a finalist for the Omnidawn Revealed Identity Book Prize and a semi-finalist for the Cleveland State University First Book Prize. She lives in Indiana with her husband and chickens.
About the work: “In 2019, I collaborated with a composer and other poets on an extended performance for flute and percussion called The Avian Suite; my part celebrated the dickcissel — a perky, unfortunately named songbird with a black and yellow throat. Also in 2019: photographer Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene exhibit devastated me and led to some ekphrastics. Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in A minor (L.378) made me laugh. There is an app that simulates the three-dimensional motion of biological molecules, which entertained and prompted questions about modeling in chemistry. Feminist physics poems emerged around themes of desire and dislocation. And my concept of the self shattered. The two poems in here are the result of that shattering.”
About the work: “In 2019, I collaborated with a composer and other poets on an extended performance for flute and percussion called The Avian Suite; my part celebrated the dickcissel — a perky, unfortunately named songbird with a black and yellow throat. Also in 2019: photographer Edward Burtynsky’s Anthropocene exhibit devastated me and led to some ekphrastics. Scarlatti’s Keyboard Sonata in A minor (L.378) made me laugh. There is an app that simulates the three-dimensional motion of biological molecules, which entertained and prompted questions about modeling in chemistry. Feminist physics poems emerged around themes of desire and dislocation. And my concept of the self shattered. The two poems in here are the result of that shattering.”
The Artist
Carol Radsprecher received her BFA in painting from Hunter College, CUNY, in 1985. In 1988 she got her MFA in painting. Carol has had several solo shows and numerous group shows. She is a restless visual artist. A painter for many decades, she "discovered" the wonders of Photoshop eight years ago and finds this medium very well-suited to her need to work rapidly and without storage concerns. Her images have appeared in many publications, both hard-copy and online. She is a Brooklyn native. Her Web site: http://carolradsprecher.com.
