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# One Poem by Nate Klug
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-nate-klug/
- Published: 2018-09-05T11:01:39.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:24:43.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Nate Klug for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/09/5992068314_48c12194c4_o.jpg)

Sol LeWitt detail at MassMOCA, 2011 (image via Benjamin Kabak on Flickr)

## Inchworm at Embarcadero

Where the system map’s

metal edge abuts

a fuzzed pink scalp,

an inchworm doubles back,

polite but unrepentant

in sounding the pent-up

space–hides half itself

like an em dash scrunching

to a solemn hyphen,

or a gymnast, all arm

between invisible rings,

or a pawn condemned

to the same two moves,

creative though short-lived,

or the steely tip

on the tuning fork

of a sonometer, twitching,

poised to decipher

the immiserated quiet

that descends (for some

more than others)

when we hit the Transbay

Tube, jolted closer together,

heads worlds away.

\* \* \*

Nate Klug is the author of *Rude Woods*, a modern translation of Virgil’s *Eclogues*, and *Anyone*, a book of poems. He works as a Congregationalist minister and lives in California.