Renée Agatep

Bertrand, you ass, the world
is on a tortoise back,
on that back,
a serving dish—

But what of time?        Will it end?                                          
Eclipses of moons 
the earth’s shadow round? What of Nicholas Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo 
Galilei?                       Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica? Theories of bodies 
moving in space?        Universal gravitation, each body attracted
to all bodies by a force,          in an infinite universe, infinite stars
and each star a center? 
Where did a universe come from? If everything has a cause, then mustn’t 
your God?                   If there can be anything without cause, then surely
as easily a God           as the world.
Expanding, contracting.          Where are we going?             And in the way
of infinite regress,          I must ask            
dear lady, what                                                        
what is the tortoise standing on?                                                                

you can wipe that smile 
from your face, clever boy

cut the shit: it’s turtles 
on turtles 
just turtles

all the way down. 

Renée Agatep

is an American poet and short story writer. Renee earned her master’s at Northeastern University and attended the Syracuse MFA. Renee is the winner of the 2022 Wolfson Chapbook Prize. Her chapbook, OHIO RADIO, is forthcoming from Wolfson Press (2023). She is also the author of The Iceman’s Purse: A Prompted Creative Writing Journal to Thoroughly Confuse and Ultimately Defeat Your Inner Critic (2023). Her recent work appears in Carousel, Poetry Ireland, and elsewhere.

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