poem Erbium, a Periodic Table poem By Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers

[the Writing of Kuypers] [JanetKuypers.com] [Bio] [Poems] [Prose]

Watch YouTube video
of Janet Kuypers reading this Periodic Table poem Erbium in her this Poetry is Money feature, live in Chicago 7/7/14 at “Waiting 4 the Bus” (C)

Watch YouTube video
of Janet Kuypers reading this Periodic Table poem Erbium in her this Poetry is Money feature, live in Chicago 7/7/14 at “Waiting 4 the Bus” (S)

Download this poem in the free PDF file
this Poetry is Money chapbook,
w/ Periodic Table of Poetry poems.

Enjoy this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her “Before Loc ked Doors” book poems “Erbium” (which is also in the book “Periodic Ta ble Poetry”, + showing the “7/7/14” show images 1 & 2), & “Erbium and REEs from fly ash” (which is also in the book “Twitter Verse Periodic Table Poetry”, + showing “3/30/22” show images 1 & 2, and poem image) during her “Poetic License 10/6/24 global open mic” she hosted through Zoom & a Facebook event page (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera, and posted on Facebook, Twitter/X, Link ed in, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr).
Also enjoy this as a Facebook live video stream filmed & streamed from a Samsung S9 camera w/ an oversun filter; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Link ed in, Instagram, and Tumblr. #janetkuyperstwitterverseperiodictablepoem #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuypersperiodictablepoem #janetkuypers #janetkuyperspoeticlicense

Erbium
Janet Kuypers
(poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series, #68, Er)
6/27/14
On the east coast,
shopping once
with a gay friend of mine,
we walked past a guard
at the empty clothing store
to browse for clothes.
My friend held up
a pink shirt,
asked my opinion.
I looked at it,
then at him
and said,
“I’m not a pink person,”
and we both turned
to the clothing racks.
I walked to a farther rack
and pulled out
this goth girls’ color of choice,
held up the black shirt
for his opinion.
Since he was farther away,
he responded loud enough
to confuse the large
African-American guard
when he said,
“I’m not a black person...”
And I don’t care if “PINK”
is the largest ad campaign
of a national lingerie company.
And okay, the pink ribbon
is an honor to my mom
and breast cancer research.
But I’ve never had
a love of the color
until I heard of metals
glowing in a brilliant
pink luminescence.
Because in the science of spectroscopy
(analyzing light from chemicals
through a prism), scientists discovered
stunning pink crystals that glinted alluringly
that would glow even more brilliantly
under fluorescent lights.
That has to be the element Erbium...
And any Erbium compounds
are invariably a faint pink, and —
wait a minute,
why am I going on
about Erbium
and it’s very distinct pinkness?
Well, there were spectroscopic bands
in the infrared part of the spectrum
of Erbium, and these allow Erbium
to not scatter light (or data)
in optical fibres
(the kind for all phone calls
or all Internet data transfer).
Optical fibres are gossamer thin
threads of glass, and they are
a rare optical perfection
that needs just the right element
to carry our voices,
or carry all data
without losing it to the atmosphere.
And if that element has to be pink,
then I guess Erbium
can give me another reason
to like the color pink too.

Erbium Erbium Erbium Erbium Erbium Erbium Erbium Erbium

my hand to an anim of jkchair