Because You Asked How I Could Stand Math by Michael T. Lawson
Because You Asked How I Could Stand Math
Michael T. LawsonDo you remember the first time you ate a grape? Not those waxy
green rugby balls at the supermarket, a grape. Fresh plucked off
the vine, dying summer drenching its skin. You bit down expecting
sweetness and the sour shivered through you. Like clacking your
molars on a thunderbolt. You knew—not everything, no, just this
one thing a little better: the way a grape tastes. The way it
shimmers. The hornet-sting of tartness, the newness, the revelation.
So little you understood. So little you still understand. An inkling.
Just more than nothing. Enough for you to pluck a second.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Baltimore Review, Summer 2025.
ABOUT MICHAEL T. LAWSON
Michael T. Lawson studied poetry and biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning a PhD in the latter and fostering a love of the former. His work has been published in Tar River Poetry, Ninth Letter, Nimrod International Journal, and Four Way Review, among others. His manuscript, Proof, was named a finalist in the 2025 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, where he works as a data scientist. (Source)
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