By Simone White, from Of Being Dispersed, a collection of poetry that was published in May by Futurepoem Books. White’s previous collection is Unrest.

I came upon some unfamiliar lotion* and began to think.

Let us suppose that lotion begins with principles of emulsion, which we know about from food making. The best lotions are made from what you can eat: fats pressed from the olive and the avocado; kernels, seeds, and germs of shea, palm, peanut, almond, primrose, sunflower, safflower, wheat; even the unlikely peach; even the apricot; the weird oils (O…