The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: transfinity by Joey Gould

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compactifications
of infinite series

sometimes forever turns up inside us
small as a heartbeat      steady      forever

has a bunch of forevers in between
its ordinals kinda like stone lions

guard a driveway + each big forever
like art has small forevers

paintings of fruit or ponds with a wee island
+ reeds       compactifications everywhere

little tiny cute modular infinities
e.g. the smell of a new tennis ball

+ daddy issues like my ghosting daddy
who piously davens to each letter

of the seventy-two letters in The Name
the six hundred and twelve laws

numbers scholars say are immutable
until they mute them + they should

for god’s sake when a life’s at risk
but what is my child to the infinite



asks daddy    god doesn’t respond
god has already responded

god has made flowers that are capable
of jackhammering rock slow + soft

a productivity nightmare    this forever
of a flower      like learning to love a child

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