Before the final poems that I’ll be posting in my tenure as the Racine Writer-in-Residence, I want to say thank you to all the readers who have visited over the past six months.

I would also like to invite everyone to attend the Open Mic & Performance Showcase I’ll be hosting as my community project on Friday, January 19, 2024, from 6-8pm at the recently renovated Corinne Reid Collins Transit Center (1409 State Street, Racine, WI 53403). Currently slated to perform are Talinna Earth, Dan Nielsen, Brent Mitchell, Nick Ramsey, and Esteban Colon, but we need more voices in the mix, so come on down! The event is a potluck, so bring a dish to pass if you can, but don’t worry about it if you can’t. RSVP via Facebook here, or just show up.

morning task

taut flowers
against the wall
swept uncertain
from their end
the ice outside
barely ice

Table of Contents

EDITOR’S NOTE … xxix
FORETHOUGHT …. xxiv
DEDICATION … vi
PREFACE … iv
the gravity of special relativity in general … 1
betwixt claim and achievement … 3
a constitution … 5
why do people think what they do … 6
supernatural metaphysics … 8
scratched lens … 10
pivotal slope … 12
flag station … 13
the politics of neutrons … 14
people are strange froot loops … 16
two form a center in an even set … 18
rigorous morticians … 20
lunch counter criticism … 22
what got done … 23
even better … 25
CODA … 27
EPILOGUE … 28
AFTERWORD … 29

invoice

the so-harmless window
swallows my stares
into the world
both of us
mistakes
bigger than tomorrow
when they decorated the sun
a rerun played at half speed

Bring Me the Teeth Of Bertolt Brecht

my creative process as an actor
is hypnosis of the trees
I could tell you of gingival pathogens & more

but this violence all the world calls lungs
watches bright futures
take their seat.

does the lightning ever miss the point
when it’s the lowest price in thirty days?

I will give you such beautiful pictures
I will give you bad wine in a glass with ice

-Nicholas MIchael Ravnikar