Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 10 • Summer 2004 • Poetry

Basic Math

Charlotte Young

she lives with roman numerals
all up her ass and if I divide

the headaches into the square
root of her lies, then Pythagoras

will whisper his theory about
irrational numbers that exist

on the descent of my love
that lives in infinity

perhaps, if I slid into the number
eleven, I wouldn't see her

clothes scattered on the floor
in my day dreams on Fridays

cuz I thought that since she
was born on the first meant

we had a good chance
at forever, but it lessens

never lessening enough
and she held my hand at an angle

more erotic than happily
ever after, she led me out of a train

unto platform #5, this is a
dream archetype, we wish math

would solve our problem, we
are a story problem

I'll wheel the hint of us, roll
a seven-eleven, beating the odds

spin around the number one thing
that matters, us subtracting

Charlotte Young is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan and currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Callaloo, and San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly. She has work forthcoming in an anthology for LA Women of Color.

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