Section 1: Key Terminology
Define the following terms in the context of mechanical weathering and landscape formation:
1. REGOLITH: my drenched mascara,
mantles of my skin peeled off
in front of you. Flocs of me scattered…
unconsolidated.
2. EXFOLIATION / EXUVIATION: and the successive exuviation of disguise
proceeds as we simply cannot
withstand
the internal pressure to declare. I disintegrate;
you shift your eyes
to hide a tear.
3. AEOLIAN ABRASION (MUSHROOM ROCK): I’ve heard laughs;
People say you look like an alien (sometimes,
act, too)
But the way you cautiously raise your forearms to
cover me – undercut by the wind –
awakens my incarnation
of being a granite. I feel pedestalized
in your hug.
4. THERMAL FLUX: With confession, you symbolize your cavity to
a microwave, teeming with
lukewarm mechanics faked as heat
and it cooks but never warms you.
5. DIURNAL TEMPERATURE RANGE: To which I console:
our late-night talking is our tropical niche,
the only shelter we will survive.
Large diurnal temperature change
will clot and scab our
cuts
loosen, nearly drop.
Section 2: Synthesis
Explain how these processes contribute to the final state of the landscape:
And when our tears merge & clink like wine glasses on the floor,
(underage, nothing but quivering mountain dew)
It will be more than weatherings that take place:
washings, meaningless talkings,
silent spars, dreamings,
uncountable wakings, sleepings, murmurings –
every pore on my skin is now tears. You breeze,
and crystals spring in me
like ivies.
We’re never ignorant. All the natural phenomena exist
to create us. This is our geography,
our little universe.