Diane K. Martin

Schrödinger’s Cat

No telling whether it was a Siamese or bobtail or simply a tabby.
In fact, Schrödinger's cat was a thought experiment, and it may be

simultaneously alive and dead, which is called quantum superposition,
linked, as it were, to random subatomic events that may or may not occur.

Seal this poor cat in a box (cats love boxes) along with radioactive
material, a monitor, and a flask of poison. If a single atom decays,

the flask shatters, and it kills the cat, although after a while the cat
may be alive also. In real life, if you look into the box, you can tell.

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Will’s Will

Gather up new-fallen words,
compact, and throw. You
want the bull’s-eye but also
the glow that each bean seed
underground must know,
magnanimous sun confirming
its singularity. Allow it’s
hard to tell what will last
of the dead: some words
you wrote they’ll remember
you by, a few quid for the kids,
and to the one you wed
your second-best bed.

 


Diane K. Martin’s poems are forthcoming or have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Field, Harvard Review, Diagram, The Awl, and many other journals and anthologies. Her work was included in Best New Poets, has received a Pushcart Special Mention, and won the 2009 poetry prize from Smartish Pace. Her first collection, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published in May 2010, by Dream Horse Press. She lives in West Sonoma County, California, with her photographer husband and her dog.