Caleb Nichols

IN THE MULTIVERSE WE LIVE ON THE HORIZON / ORIZON (2023)

IN THE MULTIVERSE WE LIVE ON THE HORIZON

We were on the beach talking
nonsense fractals infinity definition
where one boundary ends
and another begins is a hotdog
a sandwich what about a taco etcetera
but also what is a horizon and how
could it possibly exist and what
about the space between things
filled with other things with space
between them and this dancing
around the depth of feeling you
had for me and I for you was just
as fine as that spring that blue that
near summer you decided we were
going to end and yet continue
I asked why would I stick around
I like talking with you you said
I should have said then let’s never
stop instead I said Ok Ok Ok and
something between us which started
out as near as grains of sand began to grow
into a distance as big as this whole
infinitely sad country

IN THE MULTIVERSE WE LIVE ON THE HORIZON

We were on the beach talking
nonsense fractals infinity definition
where one boundary ends
and another begins is a hotdog
a sandwich what about a taco etcetera
but also what is a horizon and how
could it possibly exist and what
about the space between things
filled with other things with space
between them and this dancing
around the depth of feeling you
had for me and I for you was just
as fine as that spring that blue that
near summer you decided we were
going to end and yet continue
I asked why would I stick around
I like talking with you you said
I should have said then let’s never
stop instead I said Ok Ok Ok and
something between us which started
out as near as grains of sand began to grow
into a distance as big as this whole
infinitely sad country

About this work

Nichols’s ‘excavation’ practice may seem like self-erasure, but they conceive of it as digging down into the dirt of a poem to reveal something more essential. Nichols subscribes to the idea that poets tell lies, with a tendency to romanticise, and that excavations uncover meanings that poets may be unprepared to face when writing. The process reinforces an idea central to Nichols’s practice: that no poem is final; that time erodes and changes meaning. This poem in its original form is included in Nichols’s 2023 chapbook Chan Says & Other Songs (Bottlecap Press), and was excavated after publication. In placing the two together, Nichols underlines the idea that any given moment, idea or poem contains multiple meanings, readings and truths.

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