Strung Together

A collage poem constructed from sampled bits of the

original poems published in the new book Riffing on

Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory, published by Scriblerus

Press, 2008.

She couldn’t fall asleep had watcheda program on PBSabout string theories, membranes,parallel universes, gravity…

But maybe she just couldn’t knit.

Air is full of mistaken

stars & the wiggly half-

zeroesstripes

make when folded into

fabric

and in no time we started to unravel we spent the oddest days searching for our ends.

We were budding physicists; we were burnouts

trying to get comfortable with mystery

To verify the

absolute minimum

something,a shadow of a spasming

string,of what else to call it but

god?

Frequencies configuring space and

timenumerating our senses our skins

our desires

Flat in singularity with our undone strings…until we’re less than puff, slit by passing

planets into branes

Strongly tied a galaxy held

equations knit a symmetry of Nature

Matter and its oppositehiccup

gulped in the big lipped, ink-black hole

under swimming the eleven

stringsof a space they will

never enter through

eleven curled

membranes they can

never imagine

But what is it? what noun placed next to what verbmodified by what adverb

holds the secret?

Dark matter evidently holds a key to communicating across

dimensions

dimensions beyond the

three

up and down

side to side

back and forth

Dimensions pulled like taffy strings

At least one of these dimensions

blurs at the speed of a plucked guitar

string,becomes uniformly

invisible and able to inhabit more space than it ought

I am so tiny science has not figured out a way to define me

How am I so unreal

And yet my thread is real?

Begin with a line, remove the middle third. Remove the middle third

of the segments. Do it again and so on.

Only a dust of points remains

clutch quantacatch thread

make bed of messy everything

but the numbers will tell

The physics of livingtangles the common

there is another Universe

filled with old rubber bands

Let me finger their eurhythmytic.

And you’ll see I’m self-thought

The undulating

lines of pure

thought that

describethe theory

of everything

Broken strings littered the floors of physics departments everywhere

Rolled hems stiffening in the wind, strung out upon a sagging stretch of line

Only their orbital keeps them from falling into recurring dreams.

To this day there is still nothing to prove.

Many strings compared to one

when the universe shrinks into a dot

the string’s end has frayed into ten strands,which themselves can be unwound into 26.

String Theory positsno events when it isn’t metaphor, donut twists

in matter – 10 to the minus 33 cm—

And in the toy chest

of infinities

both larger and smaller sets can be found side by side

On the other hand, silly string may underpin much

of the universe

string that’s super symmetric particles

passing through your house and body

(I’m picking up super vibrations

from my GUT to my TOE)

A maddening locomotion

imperatives imbuing

shimmering

Angels wracking their

branes to tune the

superstringsof their harp’s fundamentals

remember that all motion is trying to be perfected, to be still

to loop and loop

in wavicles

of joy

that make me

matter

How many possible routes, how many maps rolled into tubes, tubes pulled taught into strings

folding into points?

Trying to calculate Horizon, the line strongbetween water and night

the whirl of charmed quarks

Extra dimensions,

parallel universes, the whole

over-loadedwagon held

together with tiny bits of string

those fickers which are returnally reprodictive of themselves

we can’t renounce the invisible, the fluid foundation

of the solidly seen. We can only imagine

and speak in shrinking

untruths

the ordering will comethe tight weave will expose its structure

and dimensions will blink our eyes

Wobbly fibres coaxed from eternity

You were unraveled in childhood until you were everything.

Strung TogetherSampled contributors to this collage poem: Cecilia Vicuña and James

O’Hern, Colette Inez, Dave Morrison, Joseph Radke, Kathleen M. Heideman, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michelle Morgan, Robert Borski,

Sandy Beck, Elaine Terranova, Diane Shipley DeCillis, Lauren Gunderson, Cherryl E. Garner, Deborah P. Kolodji, Mary Margaret

Serpento, ushi, oino sakai, assu, and Lucinda Borkenhagen, Michael Ricciardi, David Hurst, Brenda Hillman, Jeff P. Jones, Heather Holliger, Linda Nemec Foster, Susan Zwinger, Wendy

Vardaman, Christine Klocek-Lim, Cleo Fellers Kocol, Beret Skorpen-Tifft. Also: James Joyce (Finnegans Wake)

Collaged poem & power point by M. Ricciardi

Riffing on Strings – Creative Writing Inspired by String Theorywas edited by Sean Miller and Shveta Verma, and published by

Scriblerus Press, 2008

• Winner of an IPPY Silver Medal (Creative Non-fiction) 2008/9