American Scientist

Tesla, maker of homemade lightning, put sparks in a wall by mistake. He never had much of a lover & now they’ve named a car for him; & now a tanager in the pine has perched upright to put itself in danger for a mate. If, like a fire, that sound had three sides, if like a point, a flame, it would be pure geometry; such objects that strike you as beautiful, you cannot name. Tesla moved to the mountains, began shooting rays, sexual Es the hawk gave back, into the abstract—days adept at non-nothingness—far past a life & its shape. The great resister stays in you, plodding, then the blind harpist plays. Between magnetic poles, they place a motor made of money to drive the horror of an age—& daily, these unmanageable patterns, & weekly, the magnificent ordinary. The next thing you make will be different.You stand in the field not yet being struck, talking to nothing, jagged & unsure. You knew this when you started the experiment; you wanted to be changed & you were—