Joe Milutis

NINE


The Sorrows of Young
Werther on the 9s
Film at eleven

Is this a system?
This nownbere of quanta
This nowmere of sum-where

A Revolution 9
Followed by the pound sign
orbiting the sum

The rumor a mirror
makes of a room
and air

.

For me, it will always
be nine planets.

Pluto means a lot.

.

Toodle-loo
to loot,
luted.

.

Seeing Close Encounters
of the Third Kind,
for the third time

Reminded me of
being nine.

.

Even our poetry
is not on the metric system.
9 verges on a deci-

mega-zetta-pico-yotta
but ours is not a dead planet.
There are footlongs at the mall!

zeppometer,
harpometer,
chicometer,
grouchometer

There’s the dodecahedonism of
d and d dandies
with 12-sided dice.

Toss out six
or add another
and the world works
more or less

.

Spring is in the air
and lower, the flowers.
And further the rock
and core

This is it. the junction
of magnetic sources
Journey to the center
of the Tootsie Pop

a lick year away
where light gives way

.

9 aces
is a strange hand

When your hand
is bigger than stars
you are a wizard



a lizard incubated in
an improbable desert
a miracle composed
of shoelace and sinew

a lutograph
a seraphic line
a infinite map
en route to

nein

Joe Milutis is a writer, media artist, and Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Washington-Bothell. He is the author, most recently, of Failure, A Writer's Life, a catalogue of literary monstrosities, and is currently working on various radical translation projects. www.joemilutis.com