The Law of Large Numbers
A man sits across from me, patterned silk padlock
at his neck and orders us whatever
people drink from flutes at brunch and talks
about his theory that tenderness and paying
attention to things are synonyms
but he does not look at me
when he says it. I also have a theory
that in the lighting of certain restaurants
the law stating rarities occur within certain spans
of time simply because crazier things
have happened, shifts from hope
to a source of paranoia. This city is as large
as its exceptions. This city is one dead pigeon
from its knees. I don’t know what
I’d have said yesterday had I spoken
to the girl on the other side of the blood stain
on the A-C-E platform, who seemed sad or
was maybe just waiting, while all the supernaturally
common things that happen between people
went on above our heads. I am slowly unlearning
my own story. I am slowly surer
people introduce us to ourselves. I’m bored
by math but read somewhere the velocity
at which one body turns from another
is the same speed it takes the soul to fold
in upon itself, a number star-hard
and constant, dividing evenly
into the wattage required to light a ribcage
from within for eight seconds, or the length
of time it takes standard-size pearls to melt
in vinegar. What sort of person melts
a pearl. What sort of person goes as long as I do
without touch. For two weeks now
a man’s been squatting at the corner of my street,
shaping a Madonna with moon-colored shards
from plaster and broken tile.
He uses both hands, fits a jagged bolt of glass
into her hip. He says he smashed the pieces
himself, and he does not look at her
when he says it. Then says it again. Dizzy mockingbird
doubling its own exquisite sound.
Notes:
“The Law of Large Numbers” is from A Bright and Borrowed Light by Courtney Kampa. Copyright © 2025 by Will Anderson Music LLC. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Source: Poetry (October 2025)