by Bruce Boston
is absolutely relative,
precise and differential,
linear and curved.
When you listen more
and more carefully
to its progressive
chord progressions
and calculated harmonics,
its convoluted waves
of sound grow more
particulate and fanciful,
with strange notes and
a stranger resonance,
like a room filled
with milling strangers
at a crowded party
you begin to wonder
whether or not you
should have attended,
where no one can find
the host or tell you
exactly what’s in
the hors d'oeuvres.
appeared in Asimov's SF