sink
by matt robinson

                                                 A woman is equal to

                       this,
                       the weight of her grief.

                        - from "=" by Anne Simpson

                                              and a man to what? the same?
you know- there was a time i would have argued: would

have quarrelled with the notion
of its, this knotty-chested tugging's, weight as something

at all substantial, seen it as only equivocation. (but
                                           - i tell you: that moist heaving

from the first pew, its sudden heft
throat-bulging, surprised me, to be sure. i wondered

at it. at how it then floated all the way back past and
through the coffin, past those

two ladies in finest blacks, and hovered
just beyond the door; wafted around rooms for weeks,

months; under and over, around me as i played
at sleep - it hung thicksweet and

sour, unpleasant as old onions.) no more. and so i class it now
- this grief - as tangible but nonetheless

irreconcilable, unlike most things we deem as heavy, to
our laws of gravity. where does that leave us?

                                          so then: a man to what? his grief
seemingly weightless, i'll suggest a man then,

perhaps, is equal not to the weight of, the heft; but instead
to a displacement, or to refraction; to

the number of waves he can create as a tear salts into the still
water of the kitchen sink, (note how

the motion of this kind of thing sweats
mute concentrics); to how the light dances off the rippling.

matt robinson is worth at least this much. even way more.