THE SECOND ANNUAL CRISPIES: my favorite moments of inspiration: 2011 (#3)

DEREK MONG.

I can't do what he does and I wish I could. But I am glad he does what he does because he does it and oh so well he does. Who knew a split earthworm held the secret of our frailty and our hair's breadth from destruction and our hope for survival?

Mong knew!



EQUIVALENTS
Derek Mong

Concerning equivalents:
lost amid
the Roman catacombs, a priest will halve
his candle flame
until one glow doubles
and redoubles on the tongues of terra-
cotta pots –
a lesson the split earthworm

learns, as he stands twice the chance of being
split again:
a wise move to reproduce
for two worms slither twice as far as one,
which explains
why warheads unlock themselves
above a cityscape, thus brokering

a wider
higher bloom –
their sanguine hues

and party stars spread throughout the ether.
Are fewer survivors
what this division
equals? How does such backwards algebra
apply to the holy
whose wafers, cracked
in eighths, constitute a body, though whole

ones add up to crackers? Furthermore, how
am I standing here,
by-product of bi-
furcating cells, each one teased in two till
too many pulls
spelled embryo, and one
final tug divided me from other?