Geometry and Other Misnomers

I find parabolas to be the most beautiful hint of a totality in this whole godforsaken place. I don’t know when pergolas became all the rage but now when I pass them I feel sick to my stomach weak in my knees nostalgic for gazebos those structures without such established matrices such rigid latticework such turgid ridges. Like any building material I want to be stamped down into the dirt sanded until my skin breaks hammered until my ankle shows and breaks like James Caan’s in Misery. I’m looking for my captor I’m looking for an audience I’m looking for my stalker I’m looking for my builder I’m looking to be raised razed and raspberried on my tummy on my nickel allergicked tummy rash on my raised bumps where I shaved my pubis on my frame as a whole tossed and torn down without being caught into a pure arc into an uninterrupted freefall which is the surest surge in this mass accelerating infinity.

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Jacob Schepers is the author of A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014). His poems have recently appeared in or are forthcoming in The Greensboro Review, Heavy Feather Review, Indianapolis Review, DIALOGIST, and Midway Journal. He holds an MFA and PhD from the University of Notre Dame where he teaches in the University Writing Program. With Sara Judy, he edits ballast, a journal of poetry and poetics. More at www.jacobschepers.com and @JacobSchepers.