PHENOMENON
Depth is a third dimension derived from the other two.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty
There is, at first glance, something
paradoxical about it: staring
into and, as the saying goes, through
a picture, a printed photograph, even,
if you’re in the business of filling space
with slices of itself, these slices themselves
simply an illusion of an illusion, organized
so squarely on the wall and straightened
when necessary, or dusting, that dust
a circumlocution of matter waiting
(this is the age for it) for collection,
stratifying just the slightest bit
but only in the corners, their depths
a congregation of said stratification
that when brought to light compounds
and is sent away for dumping at the dump
unless torn along the way the plastic bag
releases it again, free to fly where it will
until wet, and before you know it
some other philosopher finds it caught
(a storm drain) and assigns it meaning,
movement, agency, and worth, if not forever
then at least a moment, a millisecond, maybe,
about how long it takes to capture what comes next.
Calvin Olsen is a writer and translator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He holds an MFA from Boston University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NC State. His work has most recently appeared in The Adroit Journal, Carve, The Los Angeles Review, and World Literature Today; and his translation of Portuguese poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães's Mediterranean is forthcoming from Hidden River Press as the inaugural winner of the Willow Run Poetry Award. More at calvin-olsen.com.