by Kimberly Ann Southwick
but the photos were a hoax, the tilt of the chair
against the wallpaper pattern made it only look
as though the man were balancing mid-air. spoon-
bending too, in a controlled environment, has a history
of failure, yet over a quarter of the population believes
if we have a word for something
it must exist: psychometry. apportation. empathy.
if you type words for things that do not exist into Google,
the results are of synthesized ideas that do exist but for which
we have no English equivalent. in some places on Earth,
there is no vocabulary for left & right— nature instead
begets language of where. where the sun rises & sinks.
the direction the bald cypress leans over its first ten years or
the bayou rushes during the pitch of a new winter moon.