Small World – Via Negativa

Blastocyst

Dave Bonta — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 23:38:29 +0000

At first, in the fallopian tubes,
the zygote is little more
than a clump: morula,
named for its resemblance
to a mulberry.
Then fluid fills it
like a balloon, a whole
lot of nothing.
That’s when the mother’s
body moves it
& it takes root in the womb.

This is the call & response
of matrix & matter:
for creative work to happen
you need that opening
without & within.
The stem cells form,
ready for anything.

I think this may be the last post in the Small World series. (If you’re reading via RSS or email, here’s the link to the whole series.)

Lentil

Dave Bonta — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:01:20 +0000

(Lens culinaris)

Until the lentil lent
its Latin name, the lens
went unknown among us,
despite being the apple
of our eyes. Now it is
the legume that lags
in popularity:
we’re more apt to wonder
what microscopic folk
might be peering blindly
up from the soup,
& suspect every
lenticular cloud
of hiding a flying saucer
from the distant bulging disc
of an armless galaxy.

Thimble

Dave Bonta — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:25:58 +0000

The first thimble was the tanned hide
of an enemy’s thumb. Whisky
had yet to be invented, but
needles were employed as lances
in desperate finger-to-finger combat.
Battlefields were so numerous,
they were stacked into other battlefields
like Russian dolls. Soon, brass
was pressed into use, & one armorer
began dimpling the surface
to ward off smallpox.
Prostitutes made their Johns (then
still called Jacks) wear thimbles
on every finger, because who knew
where those hands had been?
Meanwhile they were measuring ale
with the horns of bulls. Guts
were spilling from unprotected abdomens.
If you didn’t want a sorceror’s tongue,
you couldn’t stare open-mouthed
at the pock-marked moon.

Computer Chip

Dave Bonta — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:16:46 +0000

This is our tilled ground, our garden of forking paths. I picture its millions of transistors blinking, its mono-crystal silicon wafers pulsing as information courses like sap through the photolithographic veins, parsed by logic gates, blended by multiplexers. I know this isn’t quite what happens, but I keep trying to imagine it: how roots link up with roots & what leaps between them. How layers thinner than paper overlap like pages in a book that writes & re-writes itself, or like the sedimentary crust of a living planet. I know it’s not alive, that it is closer to a map than a landscape, & that in trying to re-purpose old templates I fall far short. But something about its stark dualism — the closed 1, the open 0 — & all it can gather in fills me with awe. The integrated circuit is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Baby Carrots

Dave Bonta — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 03:40:39 +0000

As if carrots were yeast cells,
reproducing through budding:
the baby an adorably rounded
chip off the old block.
This triumph of marketing
has in fact reversed a trend
toward shorter carrots, because
of course the long ones can yield
as many as four “babies” each.
But are they infantile enough
to compete with junk food?
One ad psychologist recommends
dusting them with powder —
not Johnson & Johnson but
something orange, like Cheetos.
Carrot breeders lament
that selecting for succulence
makes them brittle as glass.
They can crunch in the mouth
but they mustn’t shatter —
they’re not bombs.
And a faint trace of bitterness
must remain, or the consumer
no longer perceives them
as true carrots. Authenticity is key,
along with air-tight packaging.
I struggle to open a bag, & find
I’m all thumbs.

Sources: “Digging the baby carrot” and “Baby carrots take on junk food with hip marketing campaign.”

Wingnut

Dave Bonta — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:43:10 +0000

Keep it together, brother.
Don’t fret the empty head,
the female thread.
Don’t let them call you
a dumb thumbscrew.
Stand tough over your stuff
with your spatulate antlers,
your battle rattle
ready to let fly.
—Or is that, in fact, a pair
of tin ears?

A Thumbnail Taxonomy of Rivets

Dave Bonta — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 03:59:21 +0000

The rivet family is generally divided into six genuses: fully tubular, semi-tubular, self-piercing, split, tapped & compression rivets. Depending on their niche & matrix, they may be made up of copper, brass, aluminum, stainless steel or carbon steel, and their heads may be flat, oval-shaped, counter-sunk or trussed. Fully tubular rivets are mostly hollow, with a hole depth equal to or greater than 112 percent of the diameter of the body, while semi-tubular rivets, the most commonly encountered genus, have a hole depth less than 112 percent of the diameter of the body. It’s unclear, however, to what extent this classification reflects a meaningful cladistic distinction. Self-piercing rivets, despite their name, do not pierce themselves, but simply pierce sheet metal or aluminum by themselves, without needing to fit into pre-existing holes. Split rivets have evolved to inhabit soft materials—wood, light metals, leather & fibers—which they grip in two ways, the body piercing the material & the sharp prong ends folding back and biting in. Tapped rivets are found in materials too thin to accept their own tapping—a mutualistic arrangement. Compression or cutlery rivets, with their solid bodies & chamfered shanks, have adapted to the extreme environments found in the handles of knives.

Pearl

Dave Bonta — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 03:00:25 +0000

A god-shaped hole
filled with suffering.
Go ahead,
wear it around your neck
as if you’re entitled
to the gleam of others’ tears,
as if your own
microscopic irritations
could so entomb the light.
Tell yourself the oysters
sleep easy in their beds,
that no pea could keep
such plebians from
a sound sleep,
& that it’s absurd
to see a world of pain
in a grain of sand.

Oak Apple Gall

Dave Bonta — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 05:02:23 +0000

Incidental planet, Biblical metonym for bitterness, a green anti-fruit filled with air in citrus-like sections & harboring a larva at its core. The oak’s response to a bit of foreign matter is not unlike the oyster’s: wall it off inside a solid tear-drop. Come fall, it turns red but doesn’t rot, lapsing instead into tough …

Continue reading "Oak Apple Gall"

Fish Hook

Dave Bonta — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 03:06:22 +0000

Shrink an arrow
bend it back upon itself

strip it of feathers
give it a lead sinker & a cork

& a small steel eye
to aid its introspection

let the quarry do
all the travelling

drawn by flash or flicker
lure or wriggling bait

let it exhaust itself against
this irrevocable stillness