by Karen Greenbaum-Maya
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It's a cruel people.
Barbarians, they keep dead trees
among the struggling living, shocked green,
though they must know
the hate they cause.
They ignore the stars,
prefer five-armed simpletons,
castrated travesties
of those scalding selves.
Not utterly beyond redemption, though.
They worship pi,
even dedicate a day,
prepare charmingly symbolic pastries.
These, also called pi, are imperfectly round,
contain round foods,
and, like these primitives,
are perfectly irrational.
Karen Greenbaum-Maya's first book The Book of Knots and their Untying came out last fall. She co-hosts Fourth Sundays, a poetry reading series in Claremont, California.