The City High Review

Poem by Olivia Parrott

This soft dailiness deafens

my eyes twitch to the muffled time-keeper

it pierces my ears

stay on pace-they all say

my soul sweats

the escaping salt confuses my circuitry

this isn’t right

but blood has never known where it is in the centrical schedule

I can’t be human enough

I try to reach the viscera of my fumbling mind

it can’t keep pattern,. tick

follow instruction,. tick

conform to a template,. tick

define an equation,. tick

my circle doesn’t have

a radius ‘r’

or a diameter ‘2r’,

and therefore does not have an area

‘pi r squared’

Instead I travel through the center of rotation

and float through the mathematical improbability of

complete silence