The Autodidact
by
Meghan Malachi
Meghan B. Malachi is a consulting analyst and poet from the Bronx, New York. She is a Providence College and University of Iowa alumna. Her work is published or forthcoming in Milly Magazine, NECTAR Poetry, giallo lit, and Writers With Attitude. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
from The Autodidact
Poems are easier.
—Overheard During a Discussion on Fiction and Poetry
I think of my cosmic brother, of the cut
between my two dearest fingers. An incendiary smile
on its face of skin.
I think of astral abandon and the thawing of time.
The death carnival, caterwauls of the crowd.
I think of opacity as milk, of sleeves on leather jackets
that look like the creases on my palms,
all the books I pretended to read because I knew
I’d find no mirrors there.
I recall the myth of the poor: cut up shins
and marinara sunburns are there only to trick you.
The natural bijection between a poem and its cathexis.
But I can’t find the map.
The time my boyfriend’s nephew asked,
do all the lights in the city turn off
when everyone goes to sleep?
I think of mathematics, the existence of an algebraic closure,
how you think you have everything you need
but every now and then
must dip
into a field infinitely bigger than you
to find your roots.
Not all that is infinite is uncountable.
