Contemporary Literary Review India | Print ISSN 2250-3366 | Online ISSN 2394-6075 | Impact Factor 8.1458 | Vol. 10, No. 2: CLRI May 2023
John Grey
Pi, for Example
3.14159 equates to the rainbow.
a lover's unfortunate alliance.
a word is nothing more than another's risk,
and are not letting it back in so easily.
And circumferences. And radii.
And diameters.
and it can't even retreat into the language
And its skin is soft...
And the war news is bleak.
And you can deal with words
and you're either kissing them silent
as close as my fingers,
because you're all the spoken English anywhere near
But pi's eyes are green or blue
Can it bring in a second paycheck?
Can it cook? Who cares?
consonants sun-baking, vowels bemused.
Find a word like that
Your Name
I will say it backward and sideways,
my way of taking it prisoner.
I will make another word out of its letters,
see if it can put itself back.
If pi was a woman…
If pi was a woman, I'd marry her.
If you play your dialect right,
It's just a word, you tell yourself.
its syllables at odd angles,
Life is never better than in its constants.
Names have it the worst.
nothing but people attached to them –
hazel or whatever color
leaving them out of earshot.
Prices keep going up.
she'd gift me the circle,
So what if, even now, she's finding your name somewhere.
soft for as long as there is mathematics.
I Predict
Some day I will show up
Some time only one person to defend that word
Spin "blasphemy" around and it's "bridegroom."
Squeeze "peat bog" in your fist
and it's nothing more than where you left your keys.
Then it's a collection of sounds, a jabber of meanings.
It can't stop anyone saying it wrong, anyone misspelling it on paper.
They get so naked.
What's money to a calculation?
when the word is off its guard?
with no end in sight?
You never know how vulnerable a word can be
unless you see it sometime not being a word.