Summer Poetry Pop-Up --Steve Castro

A mathematical sonnet 

            for Bobby Fischer (1943 - 2008)

It’s a palindrome so my phone number

Should be easy to remember, it’s 219-1912. 

I’m local, so the area code is 812 of course. 

The most famous palindrome could easily be:

Madam I’m Adam - which is probably the first thing that

He ever told Eve. Anyway, call me

When you reach my house, it’s 115 Lincoln St. 

Notice that my address is composed of

The prime numbers 11 and 5. Also 11 + 5 = 16.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16^th President

of the United States - Can you hold for a second?

Checkmate. O.K.  I’m back. Thirty minutes is fine.

Your pizza was highly recommended.

I will see you then. Thank you.  Goodbye. 

Note: “A mathematical sonnet” previously appeared in print in ASKEW, in a slightly different version. This is its first online publication.

Steve Castro's poetry is forthcoming in Plume; Forklift, Ohio; Phantom Drift: A Journal of New Fabulism and in The Plume Anthology of Poetry 6 (March, 2018). His poem 'Scrapers of the Sky,' originally published in Green Mountains Review, was featured on Verse Daily on June 16, 2017. He was recently interviewed by the Chicago Review of Books (forthcoming). Birthplace: Costa Rica.