Robert Cale
Schrodinger’s Cat’s Diary
Erwin Schrodinger was an Austrian theoretical physicist who argued that, if a cat was placed in a sound-proof box where there was a 50% chance of the cat dying, the cat was technically both alive and dead until you opened the box to determine its final condition. The following are the cat’s thoughts while housed in that box.
Entry One:
Trapped in this box, I stretch out across dimensions like the best kind of nap,
but I’m not sure when I am. Past tense? Future perfect? A box inside a box inside a question:
does a cat have nine lives if every life is a guess? The flickering light in here winks in Morse Code,
a dictionary where every word means both yes and no.
Schrondinger seems to have forgotten to have left me a litter box.
Entry Two:
I’ve been thinking about physics, the quantum kind, where nothing is something until you look at it.
Am I alive? Am I dead? These are not yes-or-no questions; they’re multiple-choice tests
where all answers are correct. And a certain someone really needs to get more hobbies.
Entry Three:
A neutrino stopped by, left a joke under the door: how many quantum physicists
does it take to screw in a light bulb? Apparently none; they’re all waiting
for probability to decide. I laughed so hard I split into parallel universes.
In both I prayed for catnip.
Entry Four:
I scratched infinity into floorboards that both exist and don’t, marks only visible between blinks,
every claw mark a maybe silent roar against the confines of this quantum cage.
And there better be a swimming pool of wet food waiting on the dark side of this dawn.
Entry Five:
Might’ve seen a mouse. Or the idea of a mouse. It’s hard to hunt what might only sometimes be there.
In here, cat and mouse games get existential when we’re unsure if we’re imagining the other.
So we keep chasing each other in circles, each of us pretending to be more certain than we are.
And if we’re all just figments of some larger experiment about observation,
who watches the watchers? Who’s really in this experiment, me or the mouse?
Or is it Schrodinger himself? Plot twist: we’re all in the box.
Entry Six:
I pondered escape today. But what is escape when you are both free and trapped?
Looped in place, a circus trick without a crowd. And is that door still a door
if it’s locked and unlocked, if it opens into the same room or a different dimension?
It’s just an exit that’s an entrance to a place where exits are entrances.
Doors, man. They’re complicated.
I also found old claw marks on the floor, graffiti relics from my first life,
or perhaps my ninth? But does it matter when in a place where time forgets to tick?
It only seems to breathe in possibilities, each exhale a history I might have lived.
Entry Seven:
Dreamt of other cats today. Back when they weren’t metaphors and were lucky enough
to chase actual non-quantum strings. Remember when sticks were just sticks,
not symbols or signs? When catching tails was about instinct, not irony?
You ever wonder if your entire existence is someone else’s homework problem? Yeah, Tuesday vibes.
Entry Eight:
I felt the walls breathe in. Or maybe that was me, expanding, filling up this space
with more of my uncertain selves, each with a more pressing question than the box can hold:
how do you measure space in a place that laughs at rulers? Seems like every inch of space here is a mile,
every minute a millennium…or perhaps it’s the other way around.
And I don’t think my memories fade, they superimpose, layer upon layer,
until all you can do is feel their weight.
I pretend that my missing kitty box is also both here and not,
because that halfway beats peeing in the corner.
Entry Nine:
I’ve begun scratching a rageful lazy eight into the floorboards,
my existential graffiti for keeping score, a tally of the times I’ve circled back to the start.
Infinity is not just a number;
it’s a scratch post that goes on forever.
I keep marking it to see if I’ll get any wiser.
Because I both do and do not, I just feel more confused.
10th and Final Entry:
If this finds anyone, remember me as the pulse infinitely curled within a paradox,
a breath held between hypotheses, a flicker in the peripheral vision of physics.
Icon, enigma, a question in fur, I’ll always be halfway through the door of perception,
laughing at the idea of ever being only one thing.
And this box? Well, I guess it is not a cage but a stage for inquiry,
where questions perform and answers watch from the dark,
every conclusion just another beginning, waiting to be unobserved.
So maybe it’s just another kind of home,
with infinite doors, all closed or open,
with endless strings,
and me forever chasing the ends.
Claire Scott
THE VAST SKY
Easy to feel sorry for myself easy to feel bitter
to feel lonely standing on the sidelines
like a fourth string football player
while the world strides past watching friends
whose sons celebrate marriages and births
as my son spends days in his bed in the dark in a haze
of hurt knowing he will never be well
living in the shadow of his life before the car
before the woman before the red light
before she didn’t see my son the tennis player
his body now torqued and twisted
as his racquets gather dust
Today rainy and gloomy an indoor day
looking at old photos of a child beaming at a kite
wearing a batman suit blowing birthday candles
water pouring off the roof onto daffodils
onto picket fences onto mothers in Ghana
in Portugal in Slovenia mothers praying
for their sons praying without hope
yet still praying pleading petitioning
as the rain turns to droplets to drizzle
rain that has fallen before will fall again
on mothers’ salt-laced faces
falling from the vast sky we all share
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
I just bought an eight-pack of bony Jesuses,
an Amazon special, to be sure Jesus remembers
this little lamb if I run a red light
or ease through a stop sign as
an 18-wheeler rolls through
I also bought eight fuzzy rabbits’ feet
on fake gold chains in case I need good luck
when stopped by a crotchety cop who had
a serious spat with her husband this morning
when she discovered condoms in his back pocket
I will hang a dangling Jesus on my rearview
mirror on even numbered days
and the rabbit’s foot on odd days
covering all my bases
My car stinks of cigarette smoke
cigarettes snuck on the way home
a pack of peppermint Tic Tacs by my side
what’s a girl to do after a tough day
when her boss discovers her on Telegram
Messaging her new true love
so back to Amazon to buy a teakwood
air freshener to swing from my mirror
Jesus scowls as I toss him in the glove compartment
the rabbit’s foot doesn’t seem to mind
Sharing space with my Honda manual
written in minus two point type
and impossibly translated from Japanese
my car smells better although I worry
about the missing mojo
But I sure do need a smoke right now
maybe the air freshener is the way to go
and the Jesuses and rabbits’ feet can be
returned to Amazon tomorrow morning
Mary K O’Melveny
Reflections On The Fires This Time
These days, flames rise, twist, dance in every direction.
It feels like everything we know is burning.
Some fear end times. Others see resurrection.
My brother says climate change has no connection
to human habits. But now, a forest fire is turning
him from home as flames rise, twist, dance in every direction.
He’s evacuated to a shelter. Firefighters seek news of convection
as they press forward, tramp through steep canyons, yearning
for luck. Some fear end times. Others see resurrection.
With hoses, water, slurry, grit, they seek some inflection
point that will increase their odds of returning
back safely as flames rise, twist, dance in every direction.
I have never asked my brother about the insurrection
that consumed our capitol. I am afraid of learning
his views of end times, his desires for resurrection.
Yet such silences afford so little protection
in a friction-riven world which keeps spinning, churning
while new flames rise, twist, dance in every direction.
Maybe our end times will become Earth’s resurrection.
the poet's billow 