Aporia

Paradox is pretentious—

it’s simply either

way you’re fucked.

There is no other

English word for petrichor.

This is why a poet

shouldn’t dwell in

the Sahara. What’s the point

of windows if nothing ever

changes? There are only so many ways

in which to scribble sand. The moment

we said it’s time

became its typecast. Think mirror

and Bela Lugosi. Again we’re back

to glass.

They say a cat

will never meow

to another of its kind.

That it’s merely for the

benefit of us. Note the same

one-syllable word—tone is everything.

The mode in which it’s spoken

means more than what’s been said.

Think of the way your father

screamed your name. Or the manner

you come down on

B-flat minor.

If my brain

fails to tell me I have

cancer, how can it know

of love? Keeping death’s

little secret

to itself. And you marvel

that I’m a cynic. Our species

is already extinct—where are all the

tourists from the future?

We’d have spotted them

by now, their souvenir

apparel, watching Hitler

fade from books—before our

very eyes.

If it were up to me, I’d have deflected

the asteroid.

To hell with your grand-

father conundrum.

What’s birthed

is never unborn.

So what riddle

did we conjure  

before the 22nd Catch?

Was fourteen

the one we dropped?

There in the

bottom of the 9th,

the umpire cueing strike

amid the windup.

What came first—

the opened or the closed?

Why three

in terms of knocks?

How did God

know He was God

if there was no one there

to tell Him?

Or maybe that

was Catch-19, where you finally

find the way to get

the experience ahead of

the job—stride the tightrope

aloft the canyon—prior to

a stream eroding rock;

your echo before you’ve

even evinced a sound.

Andreas Gripp

April 9, 2026

Mirjam Delrue