the mathematicians say
a line is the shortest distance
between two griefs.

but in ga---za
(lady ga---ga,
if you’re listening—
lift my chin with your disco stick,
ask your zoe
if she feels these lines
vibrating in her bones)

geometry is broken,
the sky is a crumpled permit,
the streets run in circles
chasing their own amputated tails.

the children here
learn subtraction first:
how to take a whole family
and make it fit
into one ambulance.
(sometimes the ambulance
is a negative number.
sometimes it’s just air.)

the poets write
with smoke signals and missing teeth.
their metaphors are born
without legs.
(sometimes 3 out of 4
are left in the field.
we were all kids once.
we all ran.)

the news calls it "conflict,"
as if the earth
were a courtroom,
as if the bombs
were gavels
made of wall street silver.

the dead don’t argue.
they pile up quietly,
like unanswered letters
addressed to god
(“return to sender—
no forwarding address”)

the living?
they dig for the sky
with spoons.
(these are just lines—
pinned to my wall
like fractal scars.
wall street trades in thicker lines,
bloated ones,
ones that roll
like untouchable zeros.)

these things happen
when numbers don’t add up,
when the chalkboard
is replaced with digital plasma,
a hologram
of a hologram
of a boy
holding his own wisdom teeth
like a broken equation.

(sound check:
can you hear the static?
that’s the universe buffering.)