Recalculating

CONTENTS

Autopsychographia

The Truth in Pudding

Sane as Tugged Vat, Your Love

Two Stones with One Bird

Sad Boy’s Sad Boy

The Honor of Virtue

The Duck Hunters

Loneliness in Linden

Dea%r Fr~ien%d,

Brush Up Your Chaucer

The Importance of Being Bob

Every True Religion Is Bound to Fail

The Twelve Tribes of Dr. Lacan

Do Not Desensitize

On Election Day

I will not write imitative poetry

The Sixties, with Apologies

Not on My Watch

In Res Robin, Nibor Resalb Inscripsit Mentastrum (XXC)

Stupid Men, Smart Choices

Lenny Paschen Redux

Trouble near Me

Irreconcilable Disrepair

sorrow where there is no pain

A Theory’s Evolution

How Empty Is My Bread Pudding

[“There once was a Young Woman of Whitechapel”]

Transegmental Drift

Incantation by Laughter

Great Moments in Taches Blanches

You Say Insipid, I Say Inscripsit

[“To empty earth falling unwilled”]

A Long Time ’til Yesterday

Joint Dark Energy Mission

To a Begging Redhead

The Moment Is You

This Poem Is in Finnish

Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links

And Aenigma Was His Name, O!

Unready, Unwilling, Unable

Recipe for Disaster

Psychology of Composition (VII)

Poems for Rehab

Won’t You Give Up This Poem to Someone Who Needs It?

The Most Frequent Words in Girly Man

Death on a Pale Horse

Up High Down Low Too Slow (2)

Charon’s Boat

If You Say Something, See Something

[“Tomorrow, dawn . . .”]

Today Is the Last Day of Your Life ’til Now

Synchronicity All Over Again

Le pont Mirabeau

Long Before the Rain, I Wept

Notes & Acknowledgments

The road tells you what to do. Throw on some shades,

pump up the radio, put your hands on the wheel.

Retrace your route in reflection, but look only as far

as the blur of passing yellow lines to see the present.

Race your future to the finish line.

EMMA BEE BERNSTEIN

RECALCULATING