From “Aletheia”
By Sasha Smith
φ
how as the categorical theory of the scansion of our boundless distance
we started as finitesimal and infinitesimal
like divisions of membranes and compacted lovers
how we undefined the suffering of our mathematics solved
them to say galaxy-We has become
tangential
how we submerged together in each variable of Us-galaxy
cosigned as proxy is how as a binary
we originated from freckled offcuts
remember You-Union-Us as now
as a long-necked and spotted constellation
having hauled a limbic system of exoplanets
how we shared our contact capillaries
compressed a neural system of neutron cells
jutted each sperm to splinter a nebulae-womb
a diffused interstellar medium of gas and dust
or an unfertilized egg
how You-Universe birthed itself a cradle of stellar remnants
how as the It-We-Galaxy closed and roamed
it left us-Galaxy to be fattened by the oils and the ends of our sequences
formed clouds of stellar embryos
we collapsed we became simultaneously
embedded and open
remember how the you of You-Universe-Us
and the We in Galaxy-We
became out of ourselves
and of our collimated organs
the innards our infalling matter
remember how we self-propagated star formations
and Erasure and erased
φ
how the brain was formed was not
a forming Universe-You-Being
too smooth at first at earthing remember how
like beads of a bodied
insect you were as you were
brain before it captioned and curls
itself as necrotic
star systems how at the thorax-thalamus
you fore-winged yourself as self-befell
its cell-staged prophecies
how the You was unstructured at birth
the You-Us-Universe how we became
mimicries of sweet Kalamos and Karpos
became a water-wind-flare
swayed reed too forlorn to not sigh
being how the emerged-You chased Universe-Us
and allowed the drowning
in love re-drowning
how we sink into you our teethers how Us
contests our joining in
the swimming of Saturn’s innermost
ring that ring closest to his breasts
how we in love performed
a spine
φ
remember how looking up became a mirrored act of accretion
a terracotta gawking at the stars becoming
proto and precursors of comets
or how we attempted in our looking
to become a parallax of one arcsecond
and became instead a parcel
of debris or remember how at acute points
of subtended angles
a Galaxy-we stares back to find our deep-sky objects
looking upon us as though our nebulae and nurseries were
nostalgia or dreams
how as a captive we returned a gaze
of contrition
felt the referred itch
and watched
φ
remember having once-upon a macrocosm
or having once opened flesh
chasms mid-soul
half-chested and foiled
and having been measured
so woundedly
in deglovement
that we were tasked with ribs and sums
or the Somes of Us the ribs of our Sums remember
how in being a Union without a center
a century-old or center-of-all Union-Verse
how our You-Universe-us Is
and was the center
of Being of which Beings all become
remember when weeded out of expansion
a pantacosm wielding centurion
an old You-Being spelled its divisions
with grounded mnemonics
an ancestral defecation putrefied into ore
remember the centrioles of our materials
or the meconium core
the accumulation
Galaxy-Us spindled and marred
remember how it caused remembrance
About the author:
Sasha Smith is a Jamaican-American Bronxite poet and a Cornell MFA graduate that currently lives in Ithaca, NY. She is a recipient of the 2016 Poetry Project's Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship and her poems are forthcoming or published in Black Warrior Review, The Southampton Review, and Poet's Country. You can learn more about her work and social media handles at http://stesseract.com.
