The Electron Microscope (a half sonnet)
The sudden, overwhelming weirdness that things
exist—you only make it worse: your acts
of hermeticism, scions swarming
beneath every godbless-ed face; extract-
ing documents of barbarism, hoards
of specimens, binding our brains, our flesh
to specters, chewing at the pedosphere. Bohr
said he made man the hub again, enmeshed
in measurement. He didn’t know that each
cross-sectioned shred of matter is a mouth
lecturing
Propositions We Will Always Have with Us
Either it is raining or it is not raining.
Either light pulls light or a bicyclist is hit by a garbage
truck as it turns left into southbound lanes.
Either the city tears down an abandoned adult book-
store and a homeless camp springs up or a
man injures his hand when he ignites a pipe
bomb in an open field.
Either there is no here then there, outside nor in, or
there is no sun.
Either the crocodile churns the deep like a caldron or
makes the ocean like an ointment pan.
Either transients stab a bus driver as he leaves an
employee break facility or Addie Jones is born
with too many chromosomes in her head.
Either there is no veil between us, only the long
corridors of persimmon-buds or we should
fear nothing of the future or the past, sitting
there, hating all of Greece.
Either there is no sun or the city erects temporary
suicide barriers on a historic bridge.
Either two inmates walk away from a minimum-
security prison or a man runs a website where
people post names of others who allegedly
have a sexually transmitted disease.
Either we steer by a map of the sea without land or a
pharmacy technician steels 100,000
hydrocodone pain pills.
Either look for me under your boot-soles or there is
no sun.
Either one in three 5- to 17- year-olds take home
donated bread and pasta thanks to volunteers
or a man contracts Bubonic plague while
getting a mouse away from a stray cat.
Either we are with Sisyphus in heaven or dross &
mote & spindle & awe.
Joel Bettridge is the author of two books of poetry, That Abrupt Here (The Cultural Society 2007) and Presocratic Blues (Chax 2009) as well as the critical study, Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith (Palgrave 2009). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (The National Poetry Foundation 2008). Currently he is an Associate Professor of English at Portland State University.