COMMENTS:

Edward Nudelman’s delicious use of math and science language and metaphors combined with his sense of humor and seemingly limitless curiosity; his capacity to surprise the reader with juxtapositions and acute observations…and the sheer loveliness of so many lines…make this a book to re-read, to share with friends and family, and to return to for inspiration, discovery, comfort, and fun.

Here are a few poems from this volume...

An Element of Blank

That elephant

thudding at your inner
ear, bellowing doubt.

Squeezed into a corner,

jaws clenched against
the hammer's dull pounding

and servitude.

Is that you,

or a laboratory mouse

running for the exit?

You can work with simple math,
but these infinite sets

and imaginary numbers,

these forays into the surreal.

Everything equates to zero.

Yet tonight, the pins

are in someone else's arm.

The cat purrs herself to sleep

and frogs fade into starry silence.

You breathe open rooms,

inhale limitless space

without grimace or wail.

Closet Poet

Through a crack in my barricaded door, I can see

researchers lifting hands, exultant.  They swarm around

a blinking machine, twiddling an instrument whose sole

purpose is to spew numbers in linear lines by the reams.  

I should rejoice with them.  How many, how long,

how perfect these number series appear.  Dazzling

combinations and iterations for hypothetical models.  

Soon they’ll try to persuade me; soon I’ll be told

nothing is something.  I’ll be offered correlations

and compelling data and probably a few lyrics

from some deadhead song.  I know they mean

well, swimming laps in the same choppy sea

of discovery I’m supposed to lead them through-

but right now another research project supersedes.

I’m filtering white noise, holing up and hunkering

down in my bunker, closing the door, and locking it.

Gorilla Flower

A breach reveals a purplish bud

as pristine as the snow surrounding it.

Maybe it landed in August, or fell off

an iris gliding across four backyards. 

It might have dropped from a bird’s

feather or it could have been there all

along, beating its pretty regal chest

in the vast white jungle, just as you do

when only the impossible matters

and only the impossible happens.

Value Central

On Saturday mornings

my wife sometimes drags

me along as a scout

on her thrift store forays.

And there’s one shop

that rises above the rest

to which I’m entreated

and bribed to accompany.

I don’t know why.  I’ve never

found anything there, though

I’ve made many suggestions,

all courteously snubbed.

It’s a big shop with plenty

of smiling helpers.  It’s for

profit, though I can’t figure

out how that’s possible.

Everything’s marked down

75% off, including single

spoons and forks, a bargain

at only a quarter each.

Near what appears to be

the back of the store

a huge white drape

partitions two rooms.

On my last visit

I resolved to break into

the hidden room to see

what treasures it held.

But I was cautioned

and gently pushed back

by a courteous teenager

in a Grateful Dead T-shirt.

Now I ask to tag

along whenever she goes,

positioning myself near cut

glass and the curtain’s edge.

I’m just a disinterested party

looking for a bargain.

I try to look nonchalant.

I try not to sneeze.

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