Proof

Patty Seyburn

Palms are pure vertical.        Power lines supine
cross skinless eucalpytus      that interrupt horizon.

Horizon                                    horizon.
Say it three times and            it loses all perspective.

Streetlamps decode               the dusk.
Using proper                           theorems

and postulates                         graph the function
of sky. Find                              the perimeter

of sky. Factor                           sky. Solve for sky.
Cube sky. Let                           x equal sky.

Patty Seyburn has published three books of poems: Hilarity (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). Her poems are currently in Boston Review, DIAGRAM and Hotel Amerika. She is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry (www.poolpoetry.com).

“My best front porch was in Houston, when I lived in the neighborhood called Montrose. We’d sit on a very creaky porch swing. My housemate had a huge, protective dog named Boo. We’d smoke, fling butts into the bushes, and watch occasional people and less occasional tree roaches go by.”