Before I analyze the color of your eyes with a spectrometer
Before I fill notebooks with crosssections of your cranium
Before I map your topography at one millimeter to an inch
Before I triangulate your exact height with a protractor
Before I study a strand of your hair under a microscope
Before I pour plaster in your footprint to make a cast
Before I calculate your shoulder diameter’s angstroms
Before I immerse you in water to measure your volume
Before I divide your weight by this to find density
Before I derive locations of your ancestors’ lives
Before I look you up in every phonebook and atlas
Before I alphabetize every word you have written
Before I survey your lifeline with a pica stick
Before I visit the neighborhood you grew up in
Before I write down what you say while asleep
Before I sketch a map of your nervous system
Before I learn to sing your favorite operas
Before I devise every anagram of your name
Before I scatterplot your electron orbits
Before I pin your coordinates on a globe
Before I classify each of your freckles
Before I map out your pleasure centers
Before I memorize all 10 fingerprints

Before I begin to compose this poem

Have you noticed me noticing you?


Does it make you uncomfortable?






















It does?

Sorry.

melting snowball
progressive poetry
number poetry
typographic poetics