(For Luiz Felipe Coelho and João de Mello, because of that subject of physics and poetics)
Susan Elmslie’s I, Nadja, and other poems
The Hard Disciplines
2. Physics: After the Genesis Concert, 1982
My bedroom measured say 10’ by 12’.
Momentum equals mass times velocity,
and what did I weigh, 95 lbs? Skinny.
One door, one window, one bed, flowered sheets.
I’d closed the drapes, was naked, half-asleep,
conch-eared, buzzed on blow-over weed. Psst.
I jolted awake: Who’s there? Stroking his need,
he leaned in the doorway to my room. A seat?
he begged, gesturing to my pink bedspread.
He was sizing me up, my brother’s friend.
One door, and he blocked it. Forget what you’ve read
about sailing, tacking into the wind —
I resolved this force with words:
Go ahead
and when he moved I shot past him, a warhead.
