[schema geometrica] [W/DATA STORAGE IN IT & A RAIN STICK]
by dennis hinrichsen
“This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.”
John Donne, “The Sun Rising”
—I download a photograph of the sun &
offer penance—which is a lump of coal—I cannot keep it in the Cloud
if I do otherwise // —O busy old fool unruly sun // core like a deity
eating all the hydrogen in the room // we eat here as well w/each recharging—
we have to keep the data alive—getting fucked (I think) before we are fracked // either way I will be your new silent lonesome some day // dead but still
a killing nevertheless // not even my wife knows all those coded tappings
I snap w/hacker prowess so she can begin the grand deleting—all that hot gas— poems & pix—my rags of time—going really nowhere as she weeps—just another ring in the non-abyss—storage—w/no Dante in it // no Virgil // —O Fusion
I thought it was you all along // I prayed to all the gods // I thought my blood a river perpetual // cellular data pulsing in my daughter like a rain stick
—not quite a replica of me but so lovely in its tipping I believed—dear Sun—
this mango-streaked twilight could be freely mine
Dennis Hinrichsen is the winner of Grid Poetry Prize for 2020 for his collection This Is Where I Live I Have Nowhere Else To Go which will appear later in the fall. His most recent work is is [q / lear], a chapbook from Green Linden Press, and Skin Music, winner of the 2014 Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. His previous books include Rip-tooth (2010 Tampa Poetry Prize), Kurosawa’s Dog (2008 FIELD Poetry Prize), and Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (1999 Akron Poetry Prize). His other awards include the 2015 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Prize from Map Literary for Electrocution, A Partial History as well as the 2016 Third Coast Poetry Prize and a 2014 Best of the Net Award. From May 2017 - April 2019, he served as the first Poet Laureate of the Greater Lansing [MI] area.
