Poetry by Ivars Balkits

Democritus is credited with developing the theory that all matter is composed of little Adams. Adams were splashing about in the first soup metaphor, a metaphysical slurry of whatever was lying around. It may have been a lemon-egg mixture (αυγολέμονο). Or maybe a paste of yellow peas (faβa). Adams formed then into tiny masses: molecules, a diminutive form of moles. Next, they formed protective hard cases of crystal, which explains the name adamantine. These replicated, we might say multiplied, inhabiting cells, nuclear little rooms with a bed and a desk, kept tidy by early desert fathers. Populating and populating, protein ever more protean, gel-like and growing, survival bodies simulating machines and genes acting selfishly were born. And borne along. Through it all the Adams continued as individuals (άτομα), uncuttable, while forming bonds. Long after theory replaced conjecture, poem-men (almost the name of an early desert father, by the way) and poem-women became the basic building blocks of new thinking about the original Adam. Then Existentialism came along and the new Adam was found to be mostly empty inside. 

A dual-citizen of Latvia and the USA since 2016, Ivars Balkits lives part of the year in Ohio but mostly in a small mountain village in Crete. His poems and prose have been most recently published by Pnyx, Punt Volat, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Bear Creek Gazette, Synchronized Chaos, Otoliths, Seneca Review, Anvil Tongue Radio, Harpy Hybrid Review, and Lotus Eater. He is a recipient of two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, for poetry in 1999 and creative nonfiction in 2014.

Photo by Calvin Craig on Unsplash