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Calculation is useless the closer one gets
to the edge of things: the edge of a painting,
the ravine's edge (off which falls a dumb
coyote), the edge of a knife thrown toward
a spinning woman. In each dwells
the famous paradox: division by two, a closing-
in on zero. In theory, the coyote,
halving his distance as he approaches, will
never plunge off the edge; he simply inches
impossibly closer. But life is not like that, no —
rocks break loose, the poor oaf plummets. The painting
reveals nothing beyond the frame. The knife finds
its ineluctable mark. And so the working-out
of a theory: closeness, her face: falls away.
I calculate, I stumble, I kiss the edge of her mouth.
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Anthony Robinson lives in Eugene, Oregon, where he is a graduate student
in Creative Writing. He eats out too much, and works early mornings (5 am to
noon) as a call-center slave for the local newspaper. He's been a writer all
his life, but up until about three years ago, he wrote mostly freelance
fluff articles for desperate websites, ad copy, the occasional short story,
and so forth. His work has appeared in countless web-based journals, as
well as several small print journals over the past couple of years. An essay
on the sonnet appeared in Able Muse alongside work by
Mark Jarman and others. A dozen poems are forthcoming in two print
anthologies.
In his words, his inspiration for "Closer" includes:
[r]elief that winter is over, falling
in love (this time for real), Looney Toons cartoons, something I remember
from calculus class, my mother, my friend Janice, a boring reading by Gary
Snyder...
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