you mean devalue another canvas
he said
A blank canvas is worth something.
If I put paint on it
I can’t take it back
“You put paint on it”, he will say
“I can’t take that back.”
The canvas , you see
has value
if it is blank.
If I put paint on it
you might have to pay someone
to
haul it away.
Why devalue any more canvas
he said
so he painted some crows
and shot himself
in a wheat field
a golden
beautiful
wheat field
Nobelium
Janet Kuypers
from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#102, No)*
I never saw you.
You were the one thing
we were all looking for —
peace —
and we didn’t know
what it would look like
when we found it.
If we found it.
I heard that Sweden
laid claim to you first,
but I swear,
we were all searching for you,
and I think that like most Americans
we would even try to synthesize you
in order to lay claim to you.
Listen to me,
like all Americans,
laying claim to you.
Possessing you.
Maybe you’ve kept yourself
so well hidden
because we’ll never learn
how to live in peace…
Maybe we can only take peace
in small amounts,
mixed with our usual
anger and discontent.
I know you’ve been around
for so very long,
and I can’t remember
how many years
we’ve been searching for you.
Had your hair grown
to silvery white or gray
waiting for us
to truly want peace?
Have you grown rough and metallic
in your impatience with us?
Would you be a hazard to us
if we took you in
in sufficient amounts?
Because, we want to take that chance.
Because we’ve been looking,
and we’ve been waiting for you.
* The discovery of element 102 was first announced by physicists at the Nobel Institute in Sweden in 1957. The synthesis of element 102 was then claimed in April 1958 at the University of California, Berkeley. Element 102 was first named nobelium (No) by its claimed discoverers in 1957 by scientists at the Nobel Institute in Sweden. The name was later adopted by Berkeley scientists who claimed its discovery in 1959. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) officially recognised the name nobelium following the Berkeley results. In 1994, and subsequently in 1997, the IUPAC ratified the name nobelium (No) for the element on the basis that it had become entrenched in the literature over the course of 30 years and that Alfred Nobel should be commemorated in this fashion.
Little is known about the element but limited chemical experiments have shown that it forms a stable divalent ion in solution as well as the predicted trivalent ion that is associated with its presence as one of the actinides.
The appearance of this element is unknown, however it is most likely silvery-white or gray and metallic. If sufficient amounts of nobelium were produced, it would pose a radiation hazard.
weeks after I’m sure
he’ll only hold me
in class. “Party, but
keep it secret.” It
doesn’t matter that
he’s married, must
have been guzzling
vodka when he asked.
It didn’t matter that
his wife would be
back in town the next
night or that one of
the young Asian girls
was/is so in love, is
like a Geisha to him.
Doesn’t matter, just
that he asked made
me feel alive. Doesn’t
matter that it does
not matter
But keep it a secret. He’s
in his bad boy mask. I can’t
resist that persona as if
the others weren’t magnets
too. But it’s part of the
black dirty hair, too long
jeans. What is it about this
kind of man that women
crawl to them? I can see my
self on my knees, even in
fragile fishnet tights. “Party”
I don’t think it’s a birthday
party with candles and
I doubt he wants to take me
out to ready my poems
tho some time ago he did tell
me he wanted to talk about
about them. To party suggests
drugs or sex a little rock
and rolling. The idea doesn’t
sound bad. Then, like in a
dream, plans change
and it’s over
it’s that way with
him. I think of
mothers starting
to fade as their
daughters blossom
where time is
churned and
telescoped and
someone in 2009
can fall in love
with a man born
in 1620. In
another life, I’d
be your muse
as you’ve been
mine but then,
without this
wild longing
for what
isn’t, what
can’t be, no
poems
would happen