matrix

The found poems “In the Laboratory” and “Games and a Picnic” were created from a combined source. Sentences in parentheses come from the 1948 publication, A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions by Charles Earle Funk. Funk regales his readers with the stories behind American proverbs and idiomatic expressions. The other sentences (not in parentheses) were taken from The Language of Logic, a workbook for first-year students by Morton L. Schagrin (1968).

In the Laboratory

x is a particle.  0 is the number zero.             (This is not a simple sentence.)

(It appears to have alluded originally to             some specific operation.)

If the temperature exceeds 500C, the sample

will melt.

The temperature exceeds 500C.

Fat burns.  Water boils.

(The allusion is, of course, to the concrete             fact.)

How do you feel about this procedure?  You have only two tools for this one.  The switch

is on.  The lever is thrown.

(… at the critical or precise moment…)

The sample melts.  An explosion results.  Everything is blue.

That won’t work.  You should be careful.  You wish to be burned?

You shouldn’t have made this error.

Some people are hurt if they don’t know something.

(The expression comes from the cockpit.              But it might have occurred to him to

use a politer phrase.)

Any substance can be limited only by a different substance.  If any two substances are different from one another, then one limits the other and is limited by the other.

(It is possible that the ancient Hebrew writer             had some old metaphor in mind.)

Jones is present.  Smith is absent.  John remains seated.

You will find him if you turn right

at the corner. Everyone likes John.

Beer is served.  (Neither rain nor sleet nor hail will stay these couriers.)

The men are happy.

—Romana Prokopiw