A single bite from the center of each of six lamb chops
was Einstein’s dinner.
He did not like fat.
Or waste.
He gave the remainders to his sister, his daughter,
his lover . . .
His lover’s husband was, like Einstein, a gentle man.
A sculptor, Russian, he worked
on West 8th, though, like Einstein, lived
in the immensity of the cosmos.
He made swan-shaped chairs, dwarves
taking tea, wooden boxes with wooden keys,
saints and girls and nudes. A child full of wonder,
recalled his model. A saint
seeing the macrocosm in every tiny piece of life. While she posed
a mouse stood on her shoe.
For Einstein’s lover’s husband fed them.
He fed the cockroaches, too.
G Is for Genius
Jennifer Habel
Jennifer Habel is the author of Good Reason, winner of the Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her poems have appeared in the Believer, Gulf Coast, the Massachusetts Review, the Southeast Review, and elsewhere.