Stuart Greenhouse

Little Pebbles in the Sand

 
i. Ars Poetica
 
There is a flower. Right there. No, really. I mean it, right there. There isn’t? Ok, go get one from outside, I’ll wait . . . Winter, well hell, I’m trying to write a poem here. Work with me a little.

ii. Ars Mimesis
 
As a wave is made of particles standing-still-with-the-idea-of-moving-forward, so the feeling indeterminate between us could be words read or words thought or words written but not one then the other any more than light can be thought of as sight holding still though it must be the essence of trying, rippling along the seams of what is between us as if, by making the matter clear, it could erase it.

iii. Ars Lyrica
 
[2] This is not math: a=b does not mean b=a. Saying the cat is a lamp does not mean the lamp is also a cat; there is no coin, no transactional economy; nothing can be done if you don’t work with me regardless; the lamp is a fresh-picked cornflower on your table-end; the cornflower still rooted outside, you having walked home the other way.
 
[1] This is to say, there is no syllogistic fallacy. To say all tigers are cats, for example, is to say, instantly and inevitably, that all cats are tigers. Progress by association not hierarchy and scales of reference will mean as little to your intention as the scatter of wildflowers unnoticed last spring when, hurrying by the unbuilt lot they’d burst from, you were still late to class.

[3] Therefore, saying a>b pretty nearly guarantees also that b>a, that a=b, and also that b=a; one momentsettledbeingallassociationneeds;     standingthoughtlessintime,      forgetfulastowhetherwe
are coming or going, the cat idling between us and the cornflower,enormous as adolescence in the indeterminate sun.

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Stuart Greenhouse’s poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Barrow Street, Laurel Review, Ninth Letter, and North American Review.