Avenues to Attraction

Blame God's opening the chaotic
like an eyelid, and flicking the Earth into
a twenty-mile spin. Is it tohu vevohu played
as a fractal expression? Am I an amoeba
on a different scale? Is there aim

for my existence? When Magellan
circumnavigated, he proved there was more to inter-
connectedness. We can't fall from the edge, yet
people do every day. When death happens,
we want the Earth to ache. In the meantime,

miraculous forces bond us together.
The scientist says I'm mistaken.
We're solvable equations. Then let me rethink
me as numerical beauty, or pixels
of energy like my brain's hallways

on an MRI disproving the tumor
my parents saw. I was all chronic
headaches. I felt weighted down,
the neurologist asked who doesn't
with pressure's fourteen pounds exerted

on every inch of skin.
The neurologist said, "Welcome,
kid. You've discovered the human condition."
Really, it's a different perspective
I'm looking for. Would an aerial view

from the stratosphere give me greater
clues? Should I believe
the earth was made a plaything, a universe
inside a snow globe? I won't be shaken up
if I'm not an attraction. I've heard the diehard

evolutionists say God is primal. I'm not
one to disregard fashion,
if we're only an accident of atomic
coupling, a mutation, I'll try to believe
we could've never existed. I haven't learned

what my grandmother calls
counting your blessings. A life isn't completed,
but ended. I'm not satisfied with either/
or. In my next life, I want to be a star-
let, a Marilyn Monroe. I want an image

that persists like a nebula's
forty billion year light. Yes, a mythic presence
lets me exist with purpose, as if the universe
clings to me. I want to be held
by whatever dust or chaos claims me.

Copyright © 2004 Chanda Feldman All rights reserved
from The Florida Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission