The Mayans developed the concept of "zero" (signified by a symbol resembling an ovular shell) and structured a complex number system that allowed them to measure the movement of the sun, stars, and planets, and to create accurate and sophisticated calendars. In Frozen Accident (Tia Chucha Press, 2006), Alfred Arteaga maps "the interior of zero" (21) to navigate the cardinal points of language and thought, myth and history, life and death.

Frozen Accident contains a series of 16 poems divided into three sections, each numerically marked as a fraction of the whole (1/3, 2/3, and 3/3). Unlike more traditional trajectories that progress outward (1,2,3…), this work moves toward its own wholeness—its own "full zero."

The opening section, "derrida and wittgenstein," establishes the initial theme as an engagement with the phenomenology and structure of language. The first poem, "Frozen-like Accident," reads:

 "yet," you say zero
more of ciphers
the font being 2 full

figures mark
how natural sign bleeds
colors tear spread loose
zero by drop 1
"finger was stained"
like virgin image
how rhythm of cold water
becomes areola light
and again (9)

"Yet" propels the frozen-like stasis into the movement of linguistic ciphers (simultaneously denoting absence, nonentity, and a cryptographic system with its key and meaning). The "font" marks the "2 full"-ness of its signifying potential, creating natural signs that bleed and "tear spread loose." Amidst this abstraction, Arteaga maintains a lyric intensity as rhythms of thought become areola light again "and again." In "Mist," he describes this intensity:

Simply put is
"radiant where"
seeming rays radiate
and body temperature
phonemes reach
4 more zero
yet reach
but reaching

"heat and" motion
expiate nothing
pointed 2 surpasses
reception
reflection
or refraction
pointing to all
misses nothing (16)

Arteaga explores Derrida's non-concept, non-word neologism, différance, by foregrounding the processes that create meaning—particularly, the difference between words and the continual deferral of singular meaning. Re-reading these short lyrics yields different meanings as semantic rays radiate and "reach 4 more zero," which is "yet" always in motion. Perhaps Arteaga uses the word "pointing" to point us to Wittgenstein's interrogation, in Philosophical Investigations, of Augustine's conception of language. Wittgenstein quotes Augustine's Confessions: "When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out […]" Wittgenstein goes on to show how Augustine's conception of language proves problematic when dealing with more complex language use. Although language tries "pointing to all" phenomena of experience, what is "pointed 2 surpasses reception / reflection / or refraction." Or, in Wittgenstein's words: "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life."

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