Aaron Belz

Can’t remember what the child wasn’t named
by the people she hadn’t known—it began with Q.

Jazz followed everywhere she dragged
her blanket, the way butterflies and bees

flutter up in clouds around angels’ footsteps
or mermaids’ tails slap surf into iridescence,

but they were structured. As in “Monk’s Dream”
the plaid musics alternated logorithmically,

chord after chord finding its own square root,
a sort