Jon Wesick

Sex Box

Inside the self-storage warehouse neon lights
cast a purple glow on the concrete floor.
I locate my unit, twist numbers
into the padlock, and lift the door.
Past broken furniture at the entrance
in a far corner and under old skis
and moldy, hiking boots
lies the dusty, cardboard box
that holds my sex life.

There was no space
once my roommate brought in her books on
objectification and leaning-in.
I suppose I could have made room
if I’d tossed out my files from work,
awkwardness around strangers,
and good taste.

I peel a corner of yellowed, packing tape
from the cardboard with my thumbnail
for a peek at skin-on-skin touch but stop.
Why torment myself?
There are papers to file
and clients to see

Electrical Engineering Sonnet

ATM SONET, shunt regulation
Latch, gain, vernier, band pass, logic race
Gate, drain, Karnaugh map, demodulation
Back plane, cathode ray, JFET, FSK

Multiplexer, Nyquist, CMOS, op amp
Flip-flop, ground loop, shot noise, decibel
MOSFET, slew rate, surface wave, diode clamp
Dead time, o-ring, ASIC, TTL

Colpitts oscillator, Zener diode
Jump vector, data bus, FPGA
Push-pull output stage, Reed-Solomon code
Bootstrapping, Hamming weight, CDMA

Noise figure, Schmitt trigger, varactor, strobe
PNP, NPN, surge current, Ohm

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Metal Scratches, Misfit Magazine, Pearl, Slipstream, Space and Time, Tales of the Talisman, and Zahir. http://jonwesick.com