Devil’s Lake

Spring 2011 Issue

Tim Kahl: Any Experiment

Let us be the coast increased with salt and concrete. Let us be

the currency scripted with purple dye. Let us be alpha and

let us be dead, dead with a thousand excavated bones.

Any experiment that crashes into India will need a road

more than a calendar. Buddha teaches only one god for

poverty, another functions as the fall into blind purpose,

into metallurgy. An intense coin is minted for

the average voter, finessed into doing much better, rated by

Standard & Poor’s. Let us refinance and disappear.

Let us clear debt and launch the future of

computerized trade. Let us be risk and aid package and

let us be dead, let us be dead,

dead with the interest due next week.

Any experiment will prove Aristotle wrong. The modern study

of motion travels along the original will of Galileo.

A steady velocity means our molecules absorb the force of

the boot. Electricity drives trains, cars, shreds documents,

pushes the hedge funds to compete. Energy transfers

to the logic of the central bank. Are we still engines of heat?

Show us the light from the Bunsen flame placed under

the thesis of finance. Let us not resist the attempt.

Let us be kinetic winter on the frightened cape.

Let us be the paper note that floats in the wind and

let us be dead, let us be dead, let us be dead.

Any experiment with life will be at our own expense.

a photo of the author, Tim Kahl TIM KAHL is the author of Posessing Yourself (World Tech, 2009). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, The Journal, The Los Angeles Review, Parthenon West Review, and many other journals. He appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup and the poetry video blog Linebreak Studios. He is also editor of Bald Trickster Press and is the vice president events coordinator of the Sacramento Poetry Center. He currently teaches at the University of the Pacific. More from this issue >