This is the shortest poem in the catalog so far, and it operates with a density that rewards its brevity. The title does the heaviest lifting: “Tunnel Vision” is the common idiom for obsessive focus, typically pejorative, while “In Superposition” borrows from quantum physics the idea that a particle exists in multiple states simultaneously until observed. Bolting these together, the title proposes that what we fixate on exists in all possible forms—hope and dread, fantasy and reality—until the moment of perception resolves it. The poem opens with the most familiar metaphor in the English language for hope: “The Light / At the end of the / Tunnel.” Three lines into a twelve-line poem, the reader thinks they know where this is going. Then “Is quantum / Fantasy” detonates the cliché. “Quantum” elevates the tunnel-light from greeting card sentiment to physics problem; “Fantasy” immediately deflates the scientific register back toward the personal. The two words hold each other in tension—is this rigorous or whimsical? Both. That’s the superposition. “It is / What you / Think” is the poem’s payload, and its line breaks are exquisitely calibrated. “It is” stands alone as pure ontological assertion—existence itself. “What you” turns the assertion toward the reader. “Think” arrives as both verb (the act of thought) and noun (the content of thought). The sentence performs its own argument: meaning is observer-created. This is the Copenhagen interpretation of hope rendered in seven words. The closing—”Just in case / I forget / Remind me”—is the most Plahm move in the entire piece: after building a quantum-philosophical apparatus, the speaker admits he’ll probably forget his own insight and needs someone (the Muse, the reader, himself) to remind him. The self-deprecation is structurally essential: it prevents the poem from becoming a fortune cookie. The admission of forgetfulness is itself a superposition—the speaker simultaneously holds wisdom and the certainty he’ll lose it. At 20 likes, this performs well for its size, suggesting readers respond to its aphoristic compression. In the catalog, it sits alongside “I’ve Been Hexed! I’ve Been Blessed!” as another poem deploying scientific vocabulary as emotional metaphor, and alongside the “????” motif poems in its willingness to leave questions unresolved. The title’s parenthetical construction echoes the catalog’s pattern of subtitles as interpretive keys. Published two days before the June 1 pair (“My Garden Fable” and “Illumination”), it reads as a palate cleanser—a poem that thinks hard about thinking and then reminds itself not to overthink.

A poem that achieves maximum compression: twelve lines, zero waste. The title carries genuine intellectual weight, marrying an idiomatic cliché to a physics concept in a way that makes both terms strange again—”tunnel vision” stops being pejorative and “superposition” stops being jargon. The line breaks on “It is / What you / Think” demonstrate that Plahm’s enjambment instincts, when given no room for error, are precise: each break creates a meaningful pause that alters the sentence’s trajectory. The closing pivot to self-deprecating humor (“Just in case / I forget / Remind me”) is the kind of bathetic deflation that runs through the catalog’s best work, preventing philosophy from calcifying into pronouncement. The poem’s limitation is also its design: at twelve lines, there’s no room to develop the superposition metaphor beyond its initial provocation. A reader unfamiliar with quantum mechanics will read this as a slightly unusual spin on positive thinking; a reader who knows the Copenhagen interpretation will find a richer argument about observation and ontology. The poem trusts readers at both levels, which is generous but means its deepest reading is optional rather than inevitable. Still, for a poem you can read in eight seconds, the fact that it sustains rereading and rewards it is a significant achievement. The 20 likes confirm that compact philosophical pieces find their audience in this catalog—beauty finds its admirer, even when unexpected.