Institutional cleaning agents fill the hallway
The musty not-often used lecture hall downtown
Filling with people and their inoffensive scent
Head & Shoulder from the head in front of me
The elderly woman dabblings of perfume
Versace, Prada? Claire de la Lune?
But mostly sweat, increasingly in the room
Full-capacity, air conditioner turned off.

Claudette introduces the guest lecturer
Her first slide talks of pine trees
Go to your mind palace, breathe in pine
“A pine tree is time… all being is time…”
Ruth Ozeki appears on the screen like a
Breath of fresh air
Before the talk turns to the doomsday clock
And Kyoto Hayashi’s time hopping.
Barad’s prezi slideshow swishes from
Circle to circle until, tasting tension,
The corner of the screen begins its countdown
“Screen will shut down in 19, 18, 17…”
Without breaking her stride, yet beads of sweat
She senses the energy change in the room
Prompted by the high-ceiling release of ozone
As the projector cools down.

On again, not missing a beat, the glitch
Has been quantum erased
Less of a stench of nerves as questions begin.
Mine first! Zuni in New Mexico? No…
Time crystals? Why the big stir? It’s cute.
Dark matter? Doesn’t fit her poetics.
Beyond her lifetime. How about Freud?
She might never get to unconscious.
Do physicists misrepresent the artists?
It is a matter of ownership, pastiche of QFT,
and you can’t track the theory for the trees.
Last one from Claudette, did she study
East Asian thought? She has not.
(But what of Time Being’s appendix?)

So tell me about Ozeki and quantum Zen
“I hated the book,” she says as wine swills
Handed to her by a patient Claudette
Cheese and anti pasta on trays sitting far off
“Mind if I steal her away?”
She can almost taste it, but not quite there
A paper will be published,
Its digital details sent out
Yet the smell of those pages remain
But is not to everyone’s tastes