Matt Mitchell
American River
Ashes evoke winter
fog if you forget the nasty hot.
The American River drifts
A heron in blue bespoke
takes an elegant strut
then stands mournful in smoke.
The American River flows
My broadsheet rustles
in the base of a gunmetal barbeque chimney
images of Lake County fires rise as wisps
through house with car combustion lands.
The American River sleeps
Behind fires coast side something
ominous not cumulus rises huge
in a high blue sky—say
goodbye to dry Mediterranean south end
of my northward-stretching Pacific coniferhood.
The American River dies
Suicidal self-doubt
fills the cathedrals with black water
as a man, sparks in his hair
crumbles the Declaration the Constitution
for fuel to ignite the fuse
to the last of Leonardo’s inventions for war.
The American River rises
Beneath flowing wheels
an American river of people meanders
eddies around gray stalk Caltrans
column flowers, bright painted, opened wide
above Sunday’s shady agora
as we stroll greet eye touch
nubby green squash
long smooth purple eggplant.
Neptune on July Fourth
Neptune’s Folly say the yellow words on
the blue wooden sign on the giant gold
birdcage where blows graybeard saxophonist
down below, and where rides perched far up high
the black bearded sea god with clamshell crown.
Trident in hand he waves, among phone wires
and tree branches, miracle sun glows through
stubborn summer fog in town with south swell
that does not want its name told, where signless
roads lead past lagoon to pathless raw ocean.
A good hideout for a god with anger
issues, father of the one-eyed Cyclops.
Master of sunlit seas, yes, but watery
grievance long held too, of nuclear option
to wreck sea wall, let loose the sleeper waves.
So, while he hides here, handsome with rippling
deltoids and triceps and such long dark hair
to match that beard, lulled by clouds of smokeweed
and that dear, wily old saxophonist
it may be time, this July four, to act.
Let’s rescue our inner American
hero, like Odysseus sea nymph-trapped
punished by this water god for rudely
holding, grabbing tight to another’s cow teats,
wanting only thin almond milk to come.
Just as we want only our pet causes
and identities, and wish for escape
from our histories, rejecting the fact
that we have them, that there is love in them,
not just atrocities, just fakeries.
Or maybe the god detained our hero
for forgetting the sound in the spume of
the wave, the voices of others far off.
People of sunburnt climes, fishermen and
fishermen’s wives, who Neptune so adores.
Adores, then sometimes ignores, as gods will,
their people on full boats headed north, or
trudging through hot deserts, still headed north
to lands where men have the chance to dream of
thin milk, not fat cream the hungry so love.
Let’s pray for our hero, while there’s a chance,
while Neptune poses and parties. Pray to
fierce brave true Athena gray-eyed goddess
to fill us, just like Telemachus, with
the wisdom within us, this summer day.
Chain Rule
The rate of change
of the composite function
is defined by the rate of change
of the outer function
evaluated at the inner function
then multiplied by the inner function’s rate of change.
Let the outer function
be White America
and the inner function
be Black America.
Then ...
to understand the rate of change
for American society
the rate of change
for White America
must be evaluated at the current result
for Black America
with Black America’s
rate of change
as the multiplier for the chain.
It’s an error in the broader proof
to assume America reduces
to black and white, color and not color
but even so, the logic
of the chain rule
still holds.
If we want redirect
the curve of the composite function
and its ideals
to infinity, not zero
we must first unfix
constants and exponents
binding the descendants
of the inner function.
Matt Mitchell is a math teacher, poet, and essayist living near the banks of the American River in Sacramento. Before living near the river he spent eight years on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. In 2022 he published his poetry chapbook The Adored Garden through Moonstone Press and this year he plans to publish his first novel, Love Economy, a love triangle and coming of age story set in Los Angeles.
