Metropolitan Sonnet


Chicago the I is lonely
and the mind's layers viscid.

I picked up the Tao Te Ching and we floated above the city
before we came down to the remarkable fact of an unchained daughter.

I keep thinking about her,
and the sky-blue jacket: why do people dress
when they are alone?

No question mark, strikethrough
your business keeps us open. If you are sitting

also be buying. At each moment the layers.

I think of how things lie on top of each other without merging.
The word is isomorph, and I consider myself
and the populations above my chin. Here is my face.

There is a fixed number of lines but I cannot end
I want jealousy, love, daring, letters between selves. . .

there is nothing on the roads but a European sign
and when the sign is erased what then.








Early Penguin Classic


I want to make some thing of beauty.
I mean, I want, I wante.
There is a scary photograph of my old girl.
I feel encircled by the groove of one.

Setting out from Canterbury the pilgrims return.
They are jovial, reciting their lines.
It's a celebration. Have a pig's eyeball.
I feel weightless, looking down from orbit.

I meant to write lookind.

Nathan Milstein hammers the horsehair
like synecdoche. He stands in
for a great deal of free-fall.

Sometimes people feel there is no
alternative to an action of great beauty.
I get defensive on the train between ideas.
I remove: uppercase, inverted commas,

clavicle, clavier.
The residue in the leatherbound
specialized encyclopedia. I want
to live in the laser's eye, the significant

diode in the consumer's stereo. Sat
next to the flour bullets on the kitchen counter.
My audience makes tea, engaged.












Simon DeDeo is a scientist and poet. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.






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