Rosmarie Waldrop

from A Little Useless Geometry

cube
Six faces that have never met. Sit on no shoulder, but firmly. A monument to monotony, to posthumous careers. Unknown among nature's forms, stranger to flesh, a cenotaph whose inscriptions blanket the absence of body. For nuance, only the accidents of light to be gathered at noon. Should we attempt to relieve it of its strangeness? It would have to be of jello to tremble like the stuffed ghosts we're used to. In any case indifferent to the gap between my observation and yours. Put on point in Astor Place, it strives for a continuous pirouette while the light grows pale with concentration. Fact is: three planes are plenty for self-expression, the other three are spoken for.

cylinders
Vertiginous verticals. We don't count on them though they are the fingers of the earth, but recognize them as doric, ionic, corncob. Or was that corruption? Regardless of standing conditions such as the state of the light or the nervous system of the observer, we think they're solid stone, though without a crust of knowledge. Compare those other stalagmites rising to graze on clouds? full of gasoline? oil? napalm? If we called them stalactites would the world be upside down? Cut to the curve's inclination toward moisture, the cylinder's slow descent underground to ground water. There. Let's leave the well enough alone so it'll quench our long thirst.

materials
I have a pedestrian dislike of stone, culinary associations with clay, and a horror of plastic. Hollows and humps. Lack of precision in the contours raises doubts that marble has said it all, but I've always had an itch to pull the legs of statues. Surrounded as they are by voyeurs, they so stiffen their lack of spine to refuse both exact theory and approximate verification. As if virgins. Do I need to consider the speechlessness of matter in order to worry if it is real? Night is coming quick as a loss of balance, as death to the soldier, with change in its pocket. Then there are the phrases I seize in order to distort them. They noisily fall to pieces at the word identity, with empty wind drifting between.