2 September 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 3
Euclidean Senses
If a point is that which has no part,
and my lines of breathless length
extend beyond the ends of the lines
given me by birth, then Miss Hammons,
my sophomore Geometry teacher,
was the plane surface of my teenage years.
We were a plane angle of a sort, inclined
to one another in a plane not lying in a straight line.
Her husband might know, or worse, she herself
might find out, seeing as the whole affair
was obtuse, mind as wide as my glands.
She had such acute angles, tight curves meant
for a brand new drivers license, but she
set up the standard teacher boundaries,
extremities of distance from my simple smiles
as if she knew I had her figure memorized.
She was the center of my circle that year,
a trilateral of her, me, and the husband I never
saw, only imagined as old and feeble; the right
angle, girls my own age, never occurred. She
was my common notion, my only proof:
Things which equal the same thing also equal one another.
Add equals to equals, the wholes are equal.
Subtract equals from equals, their remainders are equal.
Things which coincide with one another equal one another.
The whole is greater than the part.
About the author:
Jeff Kersh has an MA from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he was lucky to have studied with Angela Ball and D.C. Berry, and a PhD in Poetics and 20th Century American Literature from Oklahoma State University, where he was fortunate to study with Mark Cox and Gordon Weaver. This gradual development has produced publication in a variety of print and online publications, including Zuzu's Petals Quarterly Online, Reality Times, pith, )ism(, and others. In addition to writing and holding down a "real job," Kersh is a semi-professional musician and minor world music scholar; his first nonfiction book, Basic Hand Drumming, is due out in 2004 from Windstorm Creative. He currently lives and works in the Jackson, MS area.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Jeff Kersh at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 3, No. 3, where "Euclidean Senses" ran on September 2, 2003. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
