ASK ME

by Lindsay Garbutt

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And I still can’t claim
to understand scale
or distance. They say
my one body’s
veins and capillaries
could circle the globe
twice over. Somehow
I cannot allow this.
How tens of thousands
of miles encoil
inside a body
that is nowhere
near a mile long
or tall or wide.
I do not want you
to explain it to me.
I know we curl all kinds
of things to fit
our needs. Still,
to understand
this particular fact
would be, I’ll say,
obscene. The poets
love to say a star’s
light took thousands
of years to get near.
The scientists
enlighten us:
a light year’s
distance measures
in the trillions.
I’m here repeating
the obvious:
there are much closer
distances we still
don’t comprehend.
In ninth grade
my teacher explained
the stapler gained
energy from
being lifted in
the air. He raised
it and let it go.
The energy
then radiated
across the floor.
I can still only
understand this
as metaphor.
Someone trying
to use language
to explain what
does not obey
any language.
And here I am
believing I can
describe to you
my disbelief.

Lindsay Garbutt lives in Chicago, where she is the deputy editor for Poetry. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review, Massachusetts Review, JSTOR Daily, As Seen: Echibitions that Made Architecture and Design History (Yale University Press, 2017), and elsewhere.