Science  Write  Now

Oh the things they did with gelatine

horses hooves and meat stock

consommé

eggs in aspic

the bright green peas and perfectly even chopped carrot

the operatic curls of prawns

beheaded

lubbed into jelly-moulds and curling scrolls

 

1905 

Henri Pontcare picked at his meal 

dipping his beef in chaud-froid

meat jelly with cream

setting gravitational waves

in the aspic of the universe

pushing his fork against the cloudy thickening 

of sauce

wobbling the jelly

listening but not quite hearing the

universal woop

 

1915 

Einstein ate the flesh of beasts

with guilt

heavy in his gut

agar-agar a thin substitute

for animal collagen

algae or Irish moss or tapioca

might 

at a pinch

(always the lateral thinker)

hold the universe together

providing a thick invisible medium 

for waves of gravity

to tremble through

 

perhaps these vegetarian options could explain

the relatively weak force of gravity

extra dimensions hidden in the vegan version

sucking the force of it

from the hearty meal

of eternity

 

Vegetable gum 

might just unite

quantum and gravity

strung together on 

string bean theory

a vegan universe hidden amongst the 

pork jelly

Moldovian Piftie

kholodets

 

galareta as they say in Poland

the country where

(incidentally)

On the Physical Significance of the Riemann Tensor

was published 

 

1956

a golden age for gelatine

in the cocktail party scheme of things

and Felix A E Pirani

describing the shimmy of a particle

slow-slow-quick-quick

six-count swing

shrimp cocktail aspic

 

stretch and squish

(technical terms)

as the universe breathes

in more dimensions

than our lungs

might understand

 

2016

two peas in cold hot sauce collide 

lightless holes

which can’t be measured

except by what is absent

the universal jelly wobbles 

out across one

point three billion years of 

culinary atrocities

 

think on it

just think on it

a table spread with jelly globes and wobbling loaves

all the colours of the universe

 

I place a globule of gelatinous savoury meat sauce

on my tongue

and glance up 

to the aspic of the universe

my vast immensity of gut

swallows

digests

ruminates on

what my brain 

can never know.