helix of me). So yes indeed, what am I? I am a whole that is equal and unequal to the sum of his parts. A liquid in a solid system. The undetected spectrum floating between fixed poles of a binary. I’m something while not being anything that humans, especially American humans, can figure out. Picking up your social cues, the clock has run out on our casual encounter, and you are, as I am, very eager to go your separate way—you have a class to get to or your boyfriend waiting with a gin and tonic—but to keep respectable and polite, let me ask: Did I answer your question? Is it clear to you now what I am?
Iain Haley Pollock is the author of two poetry collections, Ghost, Like a Place (Alice James Books, 2018), which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and Spit Back a Boy (U. of Georgia Press, 2011), winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Individual poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, The Baffler, and The New York Times Magazine. Pollock serves as Chair of the English Department at Rye Country Day School and is a member of the poetry faculty at the Solstice MFA program of Pine Manor College. He also curates the Kitchen Table Series, a bi-monthly online poetry reading.