tensor: singing backwards

We imported wooden clothespins from Sweden. 

                                         Trifles, playthings

Of all—nearly half here, in memory

                                         of little comfort for

white linen from a thousand lines, & mind                        

                                         the mind, partitioned as it is,

starts, rushes through (she is just on the other side) 

                                         by disbelief:                                 

a momentum: stirring & the long rows

                                         new dead are arranged in,

multiplying. A frantic reach—

                                         under pines, the resulting lacework

one flapping sheet & tangled loose

                                         the sun made itself

by a grip (as in a mesh, vertical)—some fall,

                                         a failure.  

Lauren Caldwell writes a number of poems with math in them. These days she also collaborates with her computer, as both of them have an unhealthy obsession with Markov chains; they are currently working on a series of poems about prophets, as well as a little story about musicians. Her work has also been published in DIAGRAM.

Emily Rosko is the author of Raw Goods Inventory (U. Iowa Press, 2006). Poems are currently in The Denver Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and Shenandoah, and are forthcoming in CutBank and Pleiades.