John Deming

6: Eggs are hatching

safest to refer to it as a moment:
small, sharp beak breaking
through, the sky a resplendent
blast across little sparrow's
brain. Stunted sea turtle hatchlings
slapping awkwardly towards
dark water with sandy flippers.
Eggs everywhere hatching
into the potential for portentous,
unpredictable worlds: bubbles
and motes in vertical threads--
human heads on human bodies--
where the direct moment's
something smaller than a second,
and merely to live one moment
to the next is to hatch once more


10: Cataracts

he was the first to observe Saturn's
rings. It's disputed whether his blindness
actually came from staring at the sun.
Might stand that light can be un-
forgiving to the person who tries
to become it. Unglued, no longer listening,
she decidedly despises memories.
Too much racket above and below.
There are people standing around her,
"Mom, mom, it's me Mom, Angela,"
and it really whitens her face, the way
that forgetting everything resembles
remembering everything: the something
and the nothing weighed equally:
the first falling through the second,
producing the same end, which is flux