the frost warning lifting
at eight this morning
I awakened into the smell
of autumn—grass ankle high,
bunny on the lawn, fat.
Where was I
before DNA strands twisted
together. I should see
the darkness that passes understanding
palpable shade under the maple.
Zero hour, zero sum, ground zero
I was a satellite of nothing
Nothing comes from nothing.
A seed dropped. I was neither
egg nor yolk. Like a meteor
crashing into Jupiter, a scar
beside the red storm.
In my case, a revolving door.
My mother’s uterus a magnet
for Magellanic clouds
of sperm my father sent
probing. Out of nothing then,
zero came calling. I have no
memory of anything dark.
Istanbul Literary Review - May 2010 Edition (#17)
John Minczewski
USA
John Minczeski's A Letter to Serafin was published by the University of Akron Press this past summer. He is also the author of four other collections and two chapbooks. Recent poems appear in Big City Lit, Cerise Press, poetrymagazine.com, Kritya, and others. He lives in the Twin Cities where he works as a poet in the schools, and teaches in colleges occasionally as an adjunct.
