Would Mr. Golding have let it fly if you gave a wrong answer with the excuse that there is so much we still don’t know? I’ve heard them, the physicists. I follow them around. “One poet,” said an associate chairperson, “took me to lunch to ask about the shape of speed.” Chest-ripping laughter. Rip-roaring laughter. They do nothing, these physicists. Should someone express doubt they send a PhD allegedly incapable of eye contact to talk their ear off about the decoherence of black hole superpositions, which is just something they made up. Why do you think all their conferences are held in bowling alleys? Out of the moth-munched sweaters, into those silly shoes. Though some just focus on the cheesy fries & plastic pitchers of Miller Lite. Then a professor emeritus fires a strike—which they don’t call a strike but an exogenesis—& does a celebratory shimmy. When they finally tire or run out of Miller Lite, the physicists hide their gear in leather satchels, puff up their eyebrows & randomly choose a victim to make something up re: the behavior of a new particle at the level of five sigma.

Pablo Piñero Stillmann has just ended a year as a fellow at Mexico’s National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA). His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, The Normal School, Washington Square Review, and other journals.