Sublimation Point

By Jason Schneiderman b. 1976 Jason Schneiderman

for M.B.

The answer is entropy—how smell works—

little bits of everything—always spinning

off from where they were—flying off at random

into the world—which is to say into air.

There are other ways of solid to gas—

they’re substance specific, like iodine,

or dry ice—how I felt when I saw you—

straight to a new state without passing

through expected ones—as though enough

of me left at the moment you appeared that

I could never be whole without you—apply

heat—I turn straight into ether.

“Sublimation Point” from Sublimation Point © 2004 by Jason Schneiderman. With permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.

Source: Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004)

Biography

Jason Schneiderman earned an MFA from New York University and a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He is the author of the poetry collections Sublimation Point (2004) and Striking Surface (2010), winner of the 2009 Richard Snyder Publication Prize from Ashland Poetry Press.

Structured around an eight-part elegy for his mother, Striking Surface references both ancient myths and . . .

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