Weston Cutter
Forgive me, math, for I have added
my middle finger to moments in which
I should've let my frustration divide
in quiet, math
for years I chased a derivative lifestyle
as x approached I don't know, bliss
I suppose though no solution's
ever been your glory has it math, it's
the unknown, variability you adore,
you dig the fill-it-in later impulse, yours
were the first lessons in procrastination
after which came doozy word problems
but math fuck those trains
leaving Kansas City + Omaha at
the same time + different speeds
+ screw however many apples remained
once Suzie or whoever'd taken a few : how
many years did you watch me try to quantify
my longing? I wanted + wanted + wanted + wanted
to know what I couldn't, like the interior
of J's blouse, like the Jeapordy-like melody
you hummed to yourself
while I scrambled with graphing calculator
+ mechanical pencil trying to solve
branches of you, like the guy, four nights back,
maybe nineteen, screaming through
my rolled-up window after I'd honked at him
for swerving into the lane I was trying
to homicidelessly make my way home upon,
I suppose he wanted a chance to spit on
the old horn-blasting crank he believes
he'll never become because youth, the in
-divisibility of days, but math he'll soon enough
discover the ghost story you tell
about infinity, how there's more than one + how
every infinity contain others, the infinity
of youth a blink in the bigger infinity
that is breathing, the infinity of knowing—name
of love, sound of satisfaction, the party-
tricks of yours we call answers—a rippling
surface disturbance on the longer river
of unknowing no one, not even you,
can guess the full measure of.