Xenon (Xe)
54
xenon is an inert noble gas—a gas widely used in photographic flash tubes—the electronically triggered
kind—the kind that can be used many times instead of once, like chemical flash tubes. xenon tubes are
used for strobe lights in dance clubs and airplane wings.
Is a noble gas a princess?
What were your faces like dancing under strobe?
Can you use flash tube as light saber?
Was her body xenon-guarded in the fall?
And so, is the element still considered inert?
Tantalum (Ta) ¹
73
buried with tin
seabed's invisible backbone
buckets, big cups, hydro-cyclone
pulley roams from dredge to deep sea
pay dirt sieved by primary jig
on the rig pumping dirt through screen
from gravel—dried bagged shipped then free
pure tin before slag's tantalum.
¹“Tantalum (Ta)” was an experiment with “Literary ‘lace of flowers,’ / Dok-Soy/…a Thai poetic form that
contains 60 syllables and specific rhyming pattern” which is mentioned in Padcha Tuntha-obas’ trespasses.
Ununquadium (Uuq), or Incoming Zeroes
& Ones (first)
113
business
i’m going to suggest for this presentation on strategies
you dress up as santa claus, practice singing like patsy cline
nourishment
after the heart-shaped falafel
she overheard let's just do color
autographs
mom's memory of sofia loren
on the plane too shy to speak
fame
that road on the hill paved with gold
applause softened outdoors
epitaph
didn't we all live for love?
use your cereal box as funeral's hat
Deborah Poe's first book, a poetry collection from Our Parenthetical Ontology is forthcoming from Custom Words (fall). Many of her elements have been published or are forthcoming in MiPOesias, Denver Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, Copper-Nickel, and Flim Forum's A Sing Economy. Her current project is a short fiction collection, Event Landmarks.
