Elinor Nauen: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

EN 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The History of Western Philosophy

 

Bertrand Russell had just about convinced me

there’s more to life than sex

I’d like to go to bed

with him but he’s dead      even windowless

monads are sexy     they remind me of gonads

careening around & bumping

each other     hitting on each other

 

I know more philosophy than that

 

you’re not supposed to mix

your muse with your mistress or they’ll both

fuck you     over     the real question

is

is there anything we can think of

which

by the mere fact that we can think of it

is shown to exist outside

our thought   

 

the answer is sex

therefore god exists

 

sex is a revelation

a reason

empirical

possible     credible     self-consistent

the best of all possible worlds

sex precedes existence

precedes essence

I fuck      therefore

I attract every body with a force

directly proportional to the product

of their masses

 

Buridan’s ass

unable to choose between 2 equidistant bundles of hay

died of hunger

call me up sometime     I’ll make you lunch

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Elinor Nauen is a poet and prose writer who writes frequently about baseball, cars and driving, and place, and maintains a six-day-a-week blog (at ElinorNauen.com). Her books include Now That I Know Where I’m Going, American Guys, So Late into the Night (a book-length poem in ottava rima), My Marriage A to Z: A big- city romance, Cars and Other Poems, and, as editor, Ladies, Start Your Engines: Women writers on Cars & the Road and Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball. She hails from South Dakota, lives in Manhattan’s East Village with her husband (Johnny Stanton) and a cat (Lefty), and studies Norwegian and strict traditional Japanese karate. She hosted (with Martha King) the Prose Pros series from 2007-2019.

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Bertrand 2