Triangles

by Benjamin Grossman

are the crowned shapes. They were the earliest markings upon the walls, the beginning dribbles of art. “Pubic triangles” ancients called women’s reproductive organs before language grew immature. But some mummified opinion will say we are born from holes. Yes, circles bring us into life but all those circles lay at the center of closed v’s. More than God knows why Egyptian monuments aren’t pentagons. It wasn’t a crash that placed healthy eating inside of a pyramid. Aristotle understood the golden imprint a three-sided structure leaves upon a story.  A trapezoid must be a trapezoid. A square must be square or it risks being mistaken for a rectangle. But a triangle is a contortionist, able to shrink and expand and change while never changing. No matter the exterior conditions, the interior of a triangle will remain constant. We should all be turned green by the inner perfection of such a flexible shape.

Apples

by Benjamin Grossman

filled us with sin before we were even seeds. The protrusion in our throats is proof of this. Yet it is hard to stand over the understanding that what was once forbidden to eat is now recommended to eat daily. No other fruit can claim to keep the doctor away as well as God. The power of this rounded edibleness rests in its ability to lift the curtain on the strength of good and evil: one rotten apple spoils all the rest rotten whereas one good apple never polishes those ones of a rotten nature. But what of the insects that lay their eggs inside these apples? And where, if not underground, would the story of Snow White exist without a poisoned apple? Being the apple of one’s eye has nothing to do with apples and yet still the phrase speaks of their majesty. The apple really may not fall far from the tree, but when there are no more trees, where will the apples fall? Only the core may know that answer, or at least whoever planted those first seeds which roamed free. 

Fires

by Benjamin Grossman

burned before there were gods to steal from; before hell was under the sun; before desire was a synonym for flames; and even before dragons captured damsels. Perhaps these contained infernos began amongst an orgy of stones by humping sticks or crisscrossing tinder. Or perhaps they began in the eyes, watching the setting of yellow, volcanoes burning through stability, silence caused by lava. Though maybe fire’s origins date back to the mysteries of nowhere, an explosion in need of celebration: rescuing skin from goosebumps, expanding days into nights, chances to name stars, milk animals, forge crowns. Although fire arose far from castles, chimneys, and fireplaces, it evolved alongside of man: words whispered around flames; feasts igniting myths; beasts roasted over condensed warmth. Vocabulary stretched upward, rising beside smoke: smoldered, charred, burnt. Black fire became, origami of heat folded into desolation, consuming books, bridges, brooms, bras, babies. We will toss in anything to preserve a blaze, almost like we are unaware that all these fires are cold.

Falls

by Benjamin Grossman

occur even if we throw up Adam and Eve, cut down every single apple tree, and rid the world of autumn, because the act of moving downward both dresses and undresses us, forces us to close our eyes until we become foggy breaths exchanging air or sluggish forms sinking below the surface of love. We dread the idea of never falling again and hope that if we fall in love we never stop falling. But how many relationships have ended from landings, from that unfortunate denial of descending? We gaze at heights as if fear lay naked before our eyes, not understanding that the phobia was always about the fall. As children we may dream of wings in place of arms, or play in what drops out of the sky. As adults we may obsess over an infinitesimal chance of crashing into pieces, curse at all the precipitation we used to dance in. Age has a way of turning us from falling so that we only associate a fall with accidents and death. We’re taught nothing is worse than the Fall, and yet we’ve already fallen past that fall: from heaven to earth to hell we’ve tumbled, incapable of remembering where we ever first fell from. But what about falling stars and how we wished on them as if we forgot falling isn’t good? And didn’t we spin in circles and sing nursery rhymes until we all fell down? We watch our children fall, let them fall so they can learn to walk alone, and we lust after that high where we separate from ourselves, actually fall outside of ourselves—that lone moment when we wish we were in a perpetual state of falling. No matter what Physics knows not all things fall at the same rate just like not all things survive their falls: parachutes don’t always open; smiles don’t always overpower gravity; bombs don’t unfall. Though for every downfall there is a windfall; for every pitfall there is fallout; for every faller there is a fallback. Humans leaven from egg and sperm just as much as they leaven from falling.

Lines

by Benjamin Grossman

assemble and disassemble us. They look in the mirror only after they’ve broken it up, because if we saw where that first line was drawn then perhaps we would know where to draw the others. But since we don’t know, all we can do is draw a streak across the sand and place our toes upon it, hope that the lines in our blood gravitate away from the line of fire. But those curved signs fill our heads when we think on this, not lines per se, but rather question marks, those malformed lines too ugly to be in the line of vision. Should my palms cry more when walking on the line or crossing over it? A poet worries over nothing else but lines his entire life and the aging do the same. But are the lines on our faces really the same as the ones on the paper? Is the fishing cord in the water the twin of the invisible equator? And if lines are just puffs of air why do they get us high? Maybe at some point we’ll have to decide whether lines are offensive or defensive, and when we do we should tell everyone over the telephone. But it seems the more time we waste thinking about the history of lines the more lines we’ll find upon our own history.

The Sky

by Benjamin Grossman

is the oldest known adhesive: it was glue before glue was glue. Though how many eyes it has attracted is uncharted. But we know of the wishes it has stolen, of the prayers it has requested, of the offerings it has swallowed. How can we not describe the sky as anything other than bipolar? From yellow to red to blue to black it flutters at the speed of a chameleon. No relationship could withstand such degrees of fire and ice, and yet the sky stands with the unflinching determination of a painter’s canvas. When fireworks heave it remains unmoved. When an orgy of gods built their homes amongst its vastness and humans renamed it “the heavens” it complained no more than a tree, rather it protected the dead from the horrors of homelessness.

Windows

by Benjamin Grossman

Should never shut up. With their mouths closed how could we write of the existence of souls? Yes, these entrances shrink all other entrances. How many times did Peter Pan come through Wendy’s door? If not for a window, what would’ve become of our beloved Romeo and Juliet? Where would Rapunzel let down her hair? What friends would our teenagers rely on to sneak out of the house? A window is an ideal womb: it allows one out into the world and then allows them to return. Even the mirror on the wall would say no other is so fair. There are reasons beyond beauty that history builds its home amongst the stained glass. No window is just a window. They are knights in translucent armor, brewers of love, instruments of rebels.