We are protagonists stuck in a Greek tragedy
wherein the chorus knows more than we do
yet refuses to share their insights or advice
through peripheral narration and dithyrambs.
Professional critics of disinterested passion:
I don’t want to blow up, I want to disappear.
I can’t know my most intrinsic motivation,
but I think it is the dream of a unified field.
Units of pressure, power, energy, or force:
will the end come as a binominal equation,
a theorem, a philosophy, or a work of art?
Birth order theory, quantum gravity theory,
prevailing wisdom and hypocrisy of the day:
it’s not that I don’t trust you. I trust me more,
a baseline introvert with pro-social tendencies.
With God, all things are possible, such as God.
Including allegories, parables, cautionary tales
and their denouements, in ontogenetic primacy.
Atoms, electrons, photons, quarks, dark matter:
the degradation of the actual has a long history.
Once again confounding annuals and perennials,
I have the desire to have the desire to wring your
supraspinatus muscle of all tension and fatigue.
Among the heterogeneity in all the cases I see,
yours alone intrigues me: ancient in your fear,
you testify to transcendence, black tabernacle
housing the bling of real presence, in eternity.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1.
Virginia Konchan is author of four poetry collections, Bel Canto (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2022), Hallelujah Time (Véhicule Press, 2021), Any God Will Do and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2020 and 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and four chapbooks, as well as coeditor (with Sarah Giragosian) of the craft anthology Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems (University of Akron Press, 2022).See all items about Virginia Konchan
