Kevin McLellan

Numbers | Hands

Numbers

—In Memory of Robert Creeley

ONE

Related to all

numbers
& the letter “A.”

One heart

confound to a body;
& a single sky.

In other words:

You are not
me, nor I you.

*

Robert, shall we have one
for the road? Jack

Daniels on the rocks?


TWO

2 pairs of pairs:

ovaries & testicles
hands & hemispheres.

*

It is me & poetry & poetry & I.
What a lovely couple.

Poetry is a byproduct.
What a solitary two.


THREE

March, the color of
forsythia, is the month
you passed.

*

A way to draw
a triangle;
to play one.


FOUR

The number of hours
a now complete
construction
worker is no longer

trapped within narrow
scaffolding: a worker
who no longer waits 4 hours
as firemen extract his body.


FIVE

May
the
month
you
began;

& the month I witnessed
the construction
worker die outside
my office
window.

*

A hand. Finger
lakes. Great lakes.


SIX

Close to the word
“sex”
as in “sexty nine.”

*

Six sixes in a row:
a 1/2 dozen
eggs with sperm tails.


SEVEN

Days in a week.
Why do I not rest on Sunday?
Continents.
Isn’t Australia an island?
Wonders.
Deadly Sins.
What are they?

*

July, the month the
orchectomy took 1/2
my manhood away.


EIGHT

Octad. Octagon.
Octal. Octameter.
Octant. Octave.
Octet. Octopus.

October?

August, the color of
ants
figure eight on
orange peels.


NINE

A full term of
threes the color of
reddish-brown.

*

Cat-O[not zero]nine tails.
The cat lives
on & on & on etc…


ZERO

The loneliest number

because 0 multiplied by anything…
as in: “you are a zero,” nada, nothing.

*

The color of zero Fahrenheit
is cloudless blue sky.

You can see your breath.

*

Closest — but so far
from the letter “O”
— number to being negative.


THE FOOLS

Count backwards
starting with ten
says the anesthesiologist.

Ninety nine bottles of beer
on the wall
ninety nine bottles of beer...

Hands

— for Adrienne Dybes

That a you doesn’t
exist, and one hundred
and two times over

faith is lost: a millipede
crawls under
a maybe-house: beforehand

the mind, my mind
is cut flowers: I lost
my body between

field and vase: and
the hornet against
the bathroom

window must be killed.

Poet's Biography:

MFA graduate of Vermont College, and instructor of poetry workshops at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Kevin McLellan has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: Barrow Street, BLOOM, Exquisite Corpse, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, Lodestar Quarterly, MiPOesias and others. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.