By Emily Toder

Featured Image: Abstract by Carl Newman 1858-1932

I was being chased by a rhombus
I had gone up to it
a medium-sized rhombus the size of a float
it had enchanted me standing in its canopy
a stone-faced rhombus and yet a rhombus
with real drive
I had to get through all this landscape
to get the rhombus off my trail
I ran into a quarry I thought a rhombus wouldn’t like
I went through a lot of narrow spaces
I thought the rhombus would be too broad for but it made it
it made it through a very tiny pipe at one point
it came with me into a hollow
all the theorems and I were wrong
about it, it could fold up like a house
to get through a tube and it could support itself
on one tip which we thought it couldn’t do
and on its tip it could hop around
and it was even capable of loving

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Emily Toder is a translator, student, teacher, and New Yorker residing in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she runs Nor By Press. Her work has appeared in jubilat, Bird Dog, Skein, and Invisible Ear, and her chapbook, Brushes With, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky. Twitter: https://www.emilytoder.com/

Originally appeared in NOR 7