All Your Life
Fate is that girl in your calculus class,
Smart, unaware it seems, but scoring
Every point on every assignment,
Twirling her hair around two pencils.
She’s so far from you there’s no chance
She’ll be yours, so you begin pouring
Your life into her algorithms, each lament
And joy derivative of her posture which fills
Your heart with a purity, an answer:
Life is clear with this girl, all the proof you need,
All your life’s functions and trajectories
Finally adding up.
But you know it’s bad geometry,
That she’s an exercise, a theory, that her
Temptation is an error you want to be true.
***
Some of Jared Pearce’s poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Fieldstone Review, Kentucky Review, Labletter, DIAGRAM, and Infinity Ink. He lives in Iowa.
The Literary Nest 