POETRY : MATH PROBLEM : 400,000
Carson Beker, a longtime contributor to The Racket, had sent us a recording of a piece called “Upstairs Downstairs In The Closet” a while back. We loved it. As you do with Beker’s work.
Even better, as a sort of friendly bonus, she’d thrown in another recording of another poem–”Math Problem: 400,000”. And guess what? We loved that too. And we are of the determined opinion that you will as well. It somehow manages to pull no punches, play around with numbers, address a hard topic and still be absolutely beautiful.
Give it a read. And then give it a listen.
“Math Problem: 400,000”
by Carson Beker
If 300,000 people with 61,800,000 bones visit the catacombs to wait in line 3,600 hours to see
824,000,000 bones, some squeezing 27 beloved bones in their 27 bones, and the computer wants to know which one is important, if you pick up a femur, can you say this femur was the most important femur to one person, was everything in the world to 206 other bones, which are also there, somewhere, maybe in another room, re-arranged.
Why don’t all bones sing? Why just the one?
Why these bones, out of a billion bones, why this bone out of a billion, why these that walk now, why this set not that, why this data point and not that, which bone sparks joy, can we ask this bone why they to one other human spark joy, maybe carve into this bone to see, scrimshaw these numbers, 401,000 which must point to something, if these 206 in that order, but not this one, how can you humans tell the distance between two points, if this femur entering the room makes that knee weak, then what is the distance between all of us and the moon?
Carson Beker is a writer living in San Francisco.
