“Life In A Graduated Cylinder”

We are pegged to the line,
marked out by tests and
calibrations on a giant petri dish.

The glass is graduated,
cold, holding us fast
within a cylindrical tube.

Heaven forbid the final siphoning-
to be spun down
in the dark of an autoclave,
where the tug and pull of centrifugal force
shears the real from the impurity.

To emerge from the laboratory floor
where the school, the state,
the quiet system stamps the skin:
useful or useless in the inventory
of a brave new world.

Still, the meniscus holds its level.
The thumbprint on the base remains warm.
Life stays stubbornly unmeasured,
refusing the cold, empirical gauge.




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