AN ABBREVIATED DICTIONARY OF THE IRRATIONAL

PARA

Told sideways (for the curious).

Like scattering stones just beyond the threshold of possibility,

where they seem to arrange themselves in rows.

Where they begin to hum.

In the thick moment, in this vibrating tension

between lines stretched taut.

APORIA

How we wait.

The scene: grainy. Molecular.

We’re shifting loose, glinting sand,

urged by the thought of a path that reappears between our movements.

A silent and rapid pulse flutters in our temples.

Our words, tinny and shimmering, take shape in the air,

then dissipate like waves of heat on a bright day.

Com…. Res…. Grav….

Now mouths move as in old film.

Now earth and eye curl, slowly, arch, slowly.

The site: holographic. Retinal.

And we, shifting loose, glinting sand:

atmospheric.

Unable.

LOGOS INCARNATE

Quietly rendered atomic.

LALIA

Let curling tongues lap like cats,

let caves whisper the desert springs,

let drunkards drink near the hedge that speaks

and feast on honey wholly.

Let there be many mouths

in search of one word

no ear has heard

what the rain said, what the stones hummed

in their mother tongue, mother tongue.

But the child knows that all creatures cry

out, outward, for the voice that burns.

OMNI

This

shocks the spirit from the letter and threatens

to leave me loose-lipped and mystical.

Line by line coils to swallow its own tail,

or whirls into pieces trying to move every direction at once.

Language beside itself (paradox), language outside itself (ecstasy!).

An invitation to what is already present, a confession to one who already knows, world without secrets, moving so fast it’s still, amen.

How is it possible, this generous indiscriminacy?

To make hunger nomadic, yet hospitable.

Everywhere, for the choosing.

Yes, this is why prayer happens through the eyes, in silence.

Why we must extend ourselves.

AN ABBREVIATED DICTIONARY OF THE IRRATIONAL

irrational: (adj.) 1. Contrary to or not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical; absurd.

2. Of a number, quantity, or magnitude incommensurable with ordinary quantities, whose value cannot be exactly expressed in finite terms of the unit.

Each poetic entry in this brief collection explores a concept that raises questions about or even challenges reason, order, or possibility. Is language too finite to deal with such concepts, and/or can it enact them, outline their contours, grapple with their perplexities, somehow making them alive and sensible? My hope is that these poems don’t try to pin down para, aporia, logos incarnate, lalia, and omni, but instead act as entryways that open to the possibility of an imaginative, generous, and generative logic—one that can hold apparently contradictory concepts in tension and can offer alternatives to the binaries that bind our thinking.

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss

written during November 2006
for VCCIC art show at House of Aromas; show titled “Incarnation: The Languages of Belief, Proof, and Contradiction”; December 8, 2006