Fiber Optics


Fiber Optics
by michael rutherglen
Trace this portrait
as it strobes
to the screen:
bone-flecks
out of Longview,
Texas by way of
Palo Alto, Los
Angeles, assembling
an incisor above
an upcurved
too-red rim:
bit by flickering
bit: a smile,
overbite
on a filter-
tip, the upper
lip lagging
milliseconds
in Houston:
pupils between
Oakhurst and
Lisle: an iris,
flash-lit, dim-
inished pine-
green now west
of the stockyards:
veins in Des Moines
meshing
to her blush shot to
the lens that night
through the sudden shine.
Trace it back:
past light-pulses,
switches ticking
nearly neural time:
to the frontal
lobe from your
fingertips tracing
her backbone to the root,
before she
bit your tongue,
lit on a network
and blazed all
the distances in you.

0 thoughts on “Fiber Optics

  1. a lot of various elements integrated here to make one helluva piece. The author starts by addressing reader: “Trace this portrait as it strobes to the screen”…the ‘portrait’ is the poem whisking the reader to all these different places of importance with verve, dash, and romance. The poem has strong pull towards science but also human anatomy–what a combo! Memories of time, places, special moments with a lover (in romantic way) would be where i place my bets on this poem’s motivation and interior subject. Thx Mr. Rutherglen!

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