Andrew Seguin
THE LESSER SYSTEMS
On this day when
the clocks follow the concentric
tempo of a top
and the verb to be
has worn off its costume
so the tongue can pick a place
among pictures, touch
the unsung repose of shut
it’s like the spring is one
powder keg of pretty
and all the math that felt
unnatural adds up to up
So stay with me
and stir paint for definitions
give red to melancholy
for all I care
for all I am is care lost
in a cornfield where it seeks
accord, as love
is as much about a person
as the atmosphere they create
around your coordinates
the admissions parlor
the family tree where dinner is religion
No one ever asks
about figments of reality
but they’re there
confetti and metaphysics
make a fine pair, as do
lemon and ocean, progress, nocturne
plus other approximate
pronouns such as you and I
and the only chronological
constants worth a dance
the two-step we ones
call on and on
Andrew Seguin is a poet and photographer. He is the author of Black Anecdote, a chapbook that was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the Poetry Society of America’s New York Chapbook Fellowship. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines, including in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, horse less review, LIT and Map Literary, and he has contributed work to the New York Botanical Garden’s Literary Audio Tour. His most recent photographic work, The Whale in the Margin, a series of cyanotypes inspired by Moby-Dick, has appeared in galleries in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; New York City; and Lexington, Virginia.