texts of 3 poems from Joan Retallack’s Bosch series

Here are three poems from Retallack’s Bosch series:

1. “The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma”: see text below

2. “None Too Soon”: LINK

3. “The Long And Short of It Thought Experiment”: LINK

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The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma

Birdsong entered our words and left with migratory
echoes insufficiently dispersed. We weren’t designed
to perceive most of what surrounds us or to fully
understand the rest. Maybe it’s true that differential
equations drove the teenager off the road. The self-
propagating slope remains unhindered in its x-y axis.
It’s really difficult to find the language to say these
things rigorously. Sound waves break on the shore and
make one feel unwelcome. And too, there’s that
conspicuous absence of real metaphors in nature.
Sorry, meant to say, there’s that conspicuous absence
of real nature in metaphors. Someone will always
claim night flew into a tree. The placement of (those)
words in a line.