Ron Silliman: Online Poems
the nose of kim darby's double
Canyons, paths
dug thru the snow
Tunnels
the walls as high as
shoulders
The weight of it
heavier
when it begins to melt
& then, at sunset
still midafternoon
the temperature drops
wind over the ridge
so that by dawn
each surface
hardens into ice
Dams clog the drains
to turn the window
facing north
into a waterfall . . .
Driving north
past the mall turn, King
of Prussia, past Bridgeport
and the narrow brick streets of Norr'stown
the road eases up, what
was once country
into a more purely rural
suburbiana (golf course
blanketed in white
A gas station that has not yet
turned into a minmart
Swath cut
by the powerlines
right thru the old quarry, the pit
filled with water
is called a lake, each
new townhouse with its private dock
tho if you look upstairs
you will discover the doors to the closets
all made of vinyl
Someone in another room is singing the alphabet
Barely visible in the high slush
fog mixed with rain
a woman waits for her bus
The form of the flower
exfoliating
petals dropping away
to reveal a new, further flower
now red, now blue
each shape a perpetual
revision, this
leaf thick and milky, this
spiky, hard, this
covered with the finest fuzz
blossoms
In his dream the boy
has dug a maze through the snow
complex, magnificent
that his parents want to dig up
(At four, to identify
the tension of generations
Glow threading
thru the woods at night,
headlights from an auto
Gamuk is kissing Ganuganuga
Resolution protocol:
song of a dot matrix printer
Casting text
across the listserv,
I write
until the first sight of sun
triggers morning's hunger,
voices echo elsewhere in the house
Stool
in the form of
a sheep, black,
Dinosaur constructed
from wire and beads
A pennywhistle lies on the rug
Thru the poplars
just enough light
to cast the first silhouette.
from NON
For Jackson Mac Low
Proto-mallie: the flaneur.
"The older I get the more
floors I discover
at Macys." Little red
thermos looks like
fire extinguisher. Ants won't cross
trail of
petroleum jelly. Hat
with no bill, cubist
leather beret.
Sore on my tongue, smell
of dung. Voice's choices
sight's relight. In gaol
they make you surrender
your panty hose
to prevent suicide.
The crowd of protesters
approach, chanting
"out of the boutiques
and into the streets."
Seagull brushes
up against my cap.
Rude Work Ahead.
Velcro strap,
reusable cast.
Dog's name
is Cutty.
Eco-Brutalism, Deep
Semiology. Sturgeon
General. Boot failure!
Odd trim
of the ear's rim.
The neck seen as a tube is
seen incorrectly.
Post-its peeking
from a three-ring binder.
Dog snarls
behind window of
locked Rabbit.
Morning's magic means
make my
daily bread. Ears
put head in
brackets. Hypervariables
in DNA show up
on screen like
Bar code
on a cereal box.
Rushed writing.
one is to words
always an outsider,
tho they invade your head,
colonize dreams.
Neither an Aram
nor Omar be.
Picking your teeth versus
picking your nose. Voice
echoes up the lightwell.
Reading to discern liquids
from the bottoms of used cups.
Place mats
map the table.
De Man who shot liberty: valence.
Blue sparks fly
in the dark tunnel
beneath the train's wheels.
The sound of an egg cracking
against the bowl's edge.
All sirens are narrative.
The brothers hover in the doorway
smokin' their crack.
Powdery sugar
atop apple pancake.
Now that we have computers
liquid paper is doomed.
Pair of grackles
attempt to mate
perched atop
Amtrak arrow logo
till the she-male
jumps into flight.
Water fountain's
cooling motor
hums on.
An odd john;
high urinals
and low basins
hard to tell apart.
Thimbalism. "JWs,"
he sniffed and sniffed he did,
"black Mormons." yellow stone house
across the way, in which lives
Mrs. Florence Schneider
amid her treasures, rare china,
fine handspun cotton, a garden
of grape hyacinth--that odd
blue purple. Dump truck
pale blue filled with clay
atop which lays a shovel.
Black lores of the red cardinal.
Rounded shovel
is for cutting into
the earth, square ones
for piling it away.
Combination of
the swing and these
new reading glasses
quickly makes me seasick.
Back panel of greeting cards.
© 1993 Ron Silliman. Online Source
from You
for Pat Silliman
XVIII
For Bob and Francie
P=H=I=L=A=D=E=L=P=H=I=A. Under the dogwood tree,
scampering, playful as a squirrel, a large grey rat, fat as can be.
Old hardwood floor, impossible to cross silently in the dark. Dog
attempts to hump the cat. For Spring, an old closed-in porch, a
neighborhood crow.
Three old men play golf in the rain. What is a redpoll? Street
cobbled after all these years precisely to reduce the speed of
traffic. Thanks to Paul Hoover, I can find my work in any strip
mall bookshop in America. For Pound on the Main Line, the trip
to Penn proved no journey at all. Business center parking lot on a
Sunday, a half dozen cars parked by the squat brick six-story
building.
Beyond the tightly clustered streets of the small town,
half-boarded up Main Street surrounding the single tall spire of a
church, the road quickly turns rural (cluster of mock castle
executive homes out by the golf course). Twin clouds of steam rise
almost forever from Limerick. Concept of a basement as
"finished."
Suppository understood as a term of rhetoric. Early morning,
cheap ballpoint pen falls into a urinal in the fourth-floor men's
room–who knows how?–never to be removed, to become a
target, moved willfully by streams of urine, pushed counter
clockwise around the white–who knows what it is made of?–urinal
cake. Returning in the rain from the old brick bank to the car, I
realize that I forgot to feed the meter, had scurried right past it in
my hurry to stay dry, only to have gotten by without a ticket, little
gift of fate. Kitaj's eyes.
Back roads amid dogwood. Terminal emulation. Rag doll
anatomically correct. A cloudless sky but for the power plant. An
old small town at the center of all this development. Holds a
skateboard the way you would a schoolbook. Pink petals
everywhere.
Man sitting zazen has stroke, falls forward, suffocating in the soft
foam of an empty meditation pillow. Cat locked out all night in the
rain. A pager in every pocket. Suburban train.
Whoever lives by the aphorism dies by the cliché. A dream in
which I might know the bomber. A dream in color. Idea of a road
as a "pike."
XIX
Moment in which I realize I'm not wearing my glasses. Old stone
house. Blue plastic wrap of the New York Times. Impact of red
wine on white fur of the dog. Sunrise.
Poem as gradual as weather. Hotel art (pseudo-Hoffman softened,
retro-Rothko as filigree in pastel). What Trenton makes, the world
takes. What Nixon knew when Nixon knew it.
First compulsive songbird, pre-dawn, abruptly halts. The air
conditioner is constant (unnoticed but never silent). You can hear
the electricity in lightbulbs, faint crackling. Motivation: man in hotel
conference room throws football to the sales reps.
Too bleary to imagine. How the river carves the city (lost at night,
trying to find my way across). Dog leaps for the stick, her own
ballet, then loses interest, wanders off to sniff the grass. History as
a function of curiosity.
Of the forbidden, my three-year-old says "That makes me sad."
Impossible to discern the ice from the shards of broken glass. A
table of contents from which I've been omitted. Room in which
toupees outnumber beards. The firestorm sweeps left across the
screen: we only imagine the men, women and children inside. I'm
walking in a world you cannot imagine, having died so long ago.
Dream of real estate. Amato's tomatoes. The sun emerges
gradually through the woods. (The son emerges gradually through
the woods.) The present has not become a perfect copy, but
rather an uneditable one. The boat sinks rapidly in the text. Try to
capture the shape and impact of your cheekbones in words.
From an airplane, the spokes of suburban mall (this one in
Princeton is T-shaped) are indistinguishable from those of a
minimum security prison but for the immense parking lot. But for.
When the hard drive on the PC that controls the security system
crashes, every fire door in the hotel–each held open by electrically
controlled magnets–slams shut. Cardinals will take some getting
used to. Dark-toned palette of The X-Files.
XX
Old stone inn, used by the Tories to plot the assault on
Philadelphia, still serves rich veal medallions covered with crab
meat, spinach and Hollandaise sauce. Cardinals in the silver birch.
Metronome of an old wind-up mantle clock. Your body beneath
that new little night blouse, then my hand beneath that.
An enclosed front porch converted to language. Each person I
meet insists on telling me their "California story." Restaurant on
main floor of old municipal building: the workers stash their
belongings downstairs in the jail. Elf-like, a porcelain imitation of
Santa's wife, the woman warns us of the "colored" districts (this is
1995). Cat stops to stare at me, then turns and glides away.
Read me. Full moon in the dogwood. In St. Petersburg and
Moscow, a gang (eight young men, two women) has been
murdering apartment owners in order to sell their apartments. I set
the pager to vibrate. Driving endlessly along Bethlehem Pike,
seeming to get no closer to familiar landmarks, I notice the sun
starting to set in the East. Don't look!
In the next room, the large formal dining room table is covered
with thousands of pieces of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle (little more
than the rectangular outer rim is complete, an echo of the shape of
the table, though two of the corners have begun to be filled in,
clusters of two and three joined pieces dotting the center), but in
this light (at this angle and distance), it's impossible to tell what the
image is, or even that one exists. Crow screaming in the trees.
Gypsy curse: May you have a lawsuit in which you know you're
right.
The problem with poetry is poets. Bone spurs grab the heart. First
shrill roar of cardinals. This storm doesn't so much arrive and pass
as it does gather and dissolve.
The writhing lesson. The dog's paws as it crosses the hardwood
floor. The rain stops but the trees still have to shed their water.
House with two fire places (in sight of one another). Telescope in
the dining room. We imagine the bird's song as an expression of
emotion.
Paragraph is burning. Alone in the playground, dressed in a suit
that doesn't quite fit, red shirt, black tie, stands the
developmentally disabled boy atop the tall slide, vomiting.
XXI
Smidgens in the glass harass. Moment at which first bird starts to
sing, impossible still visually to discern dawn's approach. To
imagine Duncan's text is to envision Duncan.
First dull light foretells a clouded dawn. Bear masks made from
paper plates. Mockingbird clicks. Gradually, moving out, as the
furniture and pictures disappear, the architecture of the room
re-emerges as if hidden by use, bare potential, naked as any
person, almost obscene. Mockingbird gargles and growls.
In the dream, I have the same conversation about the storage
capacity of my laptop that I had last week with a teenage boy with
the president of CompuCom. Realtor points to a crack in the
stucco. Little boy dances to inaudible tune.
Jungle gym as prototype, as personality inventory, the problem to
be defined before it can be solved. Day in which I drive three cars
(rental car's last driver obviously smoked). Owned now by a long
succession of other people, the house in which I grew up has
become a cipher, opaque object half-buried by bougainvillea.
Sentences written long ago. Standing at the coast, horizon
contained by fog. Sign on the door reads "Division of the Arts" but
what I want is multiplication. Basket of dolls. Ratio of books to
ideas is getting higher by the day.
Her name is Cinnamon, her mother Teal. Baywatch Ken doll
anatomically edited for content (to fit your screen). Ceiling fan
spins slowly. That the whole of one's life fits into one truck.
Phone on the floor of an empty house, an echo to anything I say.
Mold on the wall behind each bookcase, a kind of damp shadow.
Aphids, like dandruff, on each leaf of the plum tree. Ham on
foccacio, a bowl of tea. The clouds hung low.
XXII
Small boy in a seaman's cap reminds me suddenly of my own such
hat at that age, cap my father left behind. A light fog promises to
burn off. A week between homes.
Voices, verbs, verses (word, bird, third – absurd). Boy's shout
from the street stories below brings me out of my sleep instantly
until I determine that all my children are here inside asleep. The
absolute second you have the first opportunity in over a week to
relax, to take a deep breath, give a sigh, you realize from its
shallow painful wheeze that you've had bronchitis for days. Pesto
potato pizza.
Seek out the path of most resistance.
A splinter I thought would work itself out has instead infected the
whole finger. Dream in which, although I haven't seen you in ages
and we were never more than cordial in a professional context, I
wake to discover you next to me in bed naked – the actual body is
always such a surprise – leaning toward me for a long, slow,
deliberate kiss, guiding my hand gradually from you small almost
conical breast south until I enter, first the front, then behind, and
you twist, groaning, a broad grin across your face. Day that never
happens.
Day that I discover total allergy to this powder detergent, big
welt-like rashes everywhere from my neck to the soles of my feet.
Cardinal in the yard smaller than I expected. You live on the east
coast now.
When, on the car radio, they hit the baby-in-the-microwave story,
I hit the button. Among the morning's rich cacophony of birdsong,
pick out first one, then another, that sound completely unfamiliar,
using each in turn as the foreground through which to hear the
whole (nearby crow entirely out of scale). Upstairs, footsteps pace
back and forth, for which I construct my own imaginary narrative:
a young girl, a Latina whose parents, themselves the children of
farm laborers, are schoolteachers, goes on scholarship to an
excellent school, then rises quickly to corporate middle
management, one day to discover her own desire for one of her
employees, an older married man entirely inappropriate for her
future – what should she do? Velcro sandals.
The sky grows lighter before it starts to rain. I stand in an empty
attic studio, wondering where to put the desk. Young poodle
lopes up to the wire fence. Fan rotates slowly over the vacant
kitchen.
XXIII
Sun is in the trees behind which a train rushes north to New York.
The day after you die, people still sip coffee in fast food joints as a
thunderstorm gathers in the sky, newspaper headlines proclaim
great events overseas, stupidity and corruption at home, suffering
everywhere. In the video game arcade, someone sets a new high
score for Tetris.
House at the edge of the forest. Two swans amid the geese by the
small lake – could they be anything but domestic? One can hear
the freeway here, but that sense of mass urgency feels wildly out of
place. High above the canopy, a deep-throated, curling birdsong
I've never heard before.
Catbird hops onto the grass. Carrying one side of the sofabed, he
steps backwards through the moving van's side door, foot missing
the long metal ramp, so that he falls from the side of the truck, the
large couch crashing down in the dark vehicle, twisting as he drops
to catch himself so that he hits the pavement with his hands out,
right wrist shattering on contact. Woodpecker taps out a message.
In the park, volunteer fire department uses the toddlers' climbing
structure to practice blindfold maneuvers. Wind in all these trees
breathes. What bird answers the call of my alarm clock?
Wooden children's climbing structure narrativized as a sailing ship,
a Cessna, a train. In this scene the monkey has become an
elephant and carries the pretend prince through the narrow streets
of the city. Most of the volunteer fire crew are in their early 20s
and stand around holding their heavy rubberized jackets, baggy
pants held by red suspenders, passing a single pack of cigarettes
between them as they watch the demonstration, fireman
blindfolded, face mask covered by aluminum foil, crawling through
the play structure, following the yellow rope headfirst down the
slide.
Dinosaurs strewn across the vast plain of an attic rug. Fireflies
glitter in the back yard, half moon making its way over the tops of
these trees. Mall lot in which people don't appear to lock their
cars. The beautiful dentist half jogs, is half dragged by her large
dog, through the forest.
Angles vs. shadows in an attic room. Bookcase full of children's
toys, overseen by a bespectacled Mr. Potato Head in a green
baseball cap. Every asset management program is built either from
the procurement database out or from an inventory function up.
Horizontalizing that work force made each member expendable.
Angels and shadows.
XXIV
She demos the grill by serving "tater tots," hot dogs, sausage, in
front of the hardware store on a Saturday from 10 until 2. Book's
spine is its sole moving part. When this you hear, so much to fear.
In the dream, bobcats and cougars have multiplied and are killing
the pets of North Berkeley. Squirrel gallops over the roof of this
house.
A quirk of morning. A quark of meaning. Estimate the train's size
just by the rumble of wheels over the tracks. Mom, she says,
spent last summer in Siberia, "telling people about Jesus." Late at
night, by a light installed over the garage door, they play
Ping-Pong in the yard, variable metronome. At the station, a
woman maybe 40 with the hard, drawn look about her of too
many years of drugs or alcohol, cigarette almost absent-mindedly
lodged between her fingers, bends down to speak gently with her
beautiful, six-year-old daughter.
Missiles, missives. Take a message (whomp). If you have a touch
tone phone, press one now (VRU with FRU). A walk in the
woods: at this point in the valley, the creek is exposed so that each
driveway requires a bridge (somewhere up high in the trees, a dog
is barking). The western idea about money. I hear the cardinal
before I see it. Each toy truck offers its own theory of
representation. Voice response unit, field replaceable unit. Then it
grows quiet and dawn arrives.
Rabbits become common, as does the American flag as a porch
ornament. The tiger in the dale, the tiger in the dale. Jays in the
trees mark distance (in the background, one barely hears the
steady rumble of a train). Old man's features blurred by years of
drink. What did I think?
"If you've already got a mouse pad," she says, "this makes a
terrific jar opener."
Disposable phone. The absence of mail. Blue jay vs. the
mockingbird's parody. Western name on his Social Security Card
vs. pure Korean on his passport, a lengthy delay at the
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The car, having sat in
the humid heat all morning. Under the tall tulip poplar. Where
yesterday I saw a rabbit successfully cross 252, today a
wolverine, fatter than I would have imagined, by the side of the
road.
Old cardboard wardrobe. Catbird's call, sort of a yowl. Basket of
bears. Biscuit of butter. Whistle in the cardinal's call. A bench at
the end of the cul-de-sac under tall trees. Still life (still as the verb).
Robin pauses, surveys his lawn.
XXVI
The breeze sucks the shade into the window's screen.
A wheeze in the garbage truck's brakes. Red and blue birds flash
in the trees. Fire flies flicker.
Lightning laces the sky. Error message. Real water boiling on a toy
stove. Anxious to start the double play too quickly, he closes the
glove before the ball is in it. Full moon smeared behind the scrim
of cloud.
Lilies shutting at dusk.
The dream gauged by depth and completeness.
The Wawa brutalizes the ice cream.
Roar of the crickets all through the night.
XXVII
Driving through completely unfamiliar streets, realizing this will be
your home. Tee ball power drive. Woodpecker's rapid beat.
Humidity of a different planet. Theory of a turnpike. At the train
station, the suburban poor become visible. Across the street,
Cowboy's Tattoo Ranch.
Raising the seven-foot bookcase high, angling it around the
banister at the turn of the stairs. Hummingbird's egg, the
appearance of a white jelly bean. Red-tail hawk turns, high over
Perkiomen Creek.
Finches at the thistle sock, doe at the edge of the highway. YTD
revenue for embedded systems. Realtor puts a plastic flag on each
lawn for Independence Day. Lawn lights. Big rigs in a row at the
service plaza. Old lamp on a modern table, flowers etched in a
base of glass.
Light switch missing its face plate, having to put towels down by
the shower just to turn the water on. One cannot give an example
of hapax without canceling the effect. Thrashing as a surrogate for
emotion. Roofed-in porch perfect for a barbecue in the rain
(groundhogs in the grass, alas).
Tic talk. The discipline of bottom feeders. Identify three routes
between points A and B; list advantages and disadvantages of
each. Young boy with a fever. Scrollin' back to my same old
used-to-be.
These are the sounds of science (thunderstorms under glass, alas),
an echo in the poem. "Eck!" screams the crowd, the famed
reliever's wavy hair flowing to his shoulders as he stares in at the
next hitter, a nearly crippled limping Kirk Gibson. Waves batter
the sea wall, full moon punctuation.
Sunlight flashes off the windshield of a car passing on the road
through the trees, lone evidence of limit to this forest. "I can smell
weekend from here," he says, 8:00 AM Friday morning. They wait
for cars to get caught by the red light in the left turn lane, then
spread out with buckets and old rags washing their windows
rapidly, knowing just how long they have to coax a tip from each
involuntary customer. Rapidly, the mountain of strips of bacon
disappear from the plate in the center of the table.
XXVIII
Squirrel at the thistle sock, fat and gray. White bearded affable
therapist next door was an RCP militant in the sixties. Static growl
of a modem.
Uncorrected proof. Riding the train backwards. To which, for
your entire library, now add the costs of hauling and shipping.
Moon follows, long walk at dusk. A two-boy basket.
I step into the humid air. What did you know and when did you
know it? Moon yellow foretelling rain. The squirrel growls. First
sun smeared across the morning sky.
Chooses "Alfred" when he comes to the US to attend college, that
the Anglos won't struggle with a Korean name. Old Giants media
guide, filled with bios of prospects who never made a dent. Smell
of over-ripe bananas the minute you enter the room.
Beyond the great mansion, five outdoor swimming pools
overlooking tennis courts and soccer fields rimmed by running
tracks. Each strip mall proposed as a theory of how to live. Small
boys playing soccer with a volley ball. Vast lawn aglitter with
lightning bugs. We stalk them.
Our love of the word poop. In the glass, ice melts, leaving beads
of water around its outer surface. A train in the forest (how did it
get there?). Moth's imprint on the window screen.
The air hot and thick as syrup, blue jays listless in the trees. First
sun reflected off the top branches before you see the sun itself.
Achilles tendon taut, almost brittle, each step as you rise the stairs.
A house of deep-colored walls, burgundy and pink, through which
to reach the large yard. Turning the corner in the corridor we
almost bump and step back, excuse ourselves and walk on, small
dance of the break-up of intimate space.
XXIX
Lightning rolling, popping, snapping all across the sky (the whole
forest in silhouette, down to the most infinite twig), then rain,
although not as much as I would have expected, after which the
hot spell is broken, no electricity anywhere for miles, people
emerging slowly form their houses once the sun rises, the beauty of
a gray dawn.
Behind this bale of hay, the tiniest full grown horse in the world, so
small that a cup of water and a handful of hay is a mighty big meal
for Tiny Tim. Merry-go-round balanced precariously over the
fairground mud. Tattoo on the back of her neck forms a pyramid
of letters, all san serif and upper case, but she won't hold still so I
can read them. Font catalog.
First the lightning, then the rain. Last demo filing cabinet missing
handles, one drawer locked with no key in sight. I walk out of the
building and my glasses steam instantly at the difference in heat and
humidity.
The cup is a funnel inverted over a base of blue clay, the handle
added later, rather large, like an ear out of proportion to its head.
Ice melts quickly, leaving only a smear of bubbles on the surface
of its watery residue. I'm calling in my role as the difficult client. In
the bank, a bowl of lollipops by each teller's window (there is only
one teller). First silhouette of the trees, predawn sky to the east.
Lettuce falls from the corned beef sandwich.
The voice that was late within us. In such weather, one can watch
bananas ripen in real time. Day lilies unfurl, the sky brightens
before the sun arrives, almost pink through the tall poplars. Black
dog wanders in the large yard in the far end of which a crow has
just settled.
In the forest, a small wood-frame house, burnt to the ground, no
sign of people anywhere. He opens the palm of his hand to reveal
a lightning bug, which rises slowly in the night air before it shines.
Fire truck rides for a buck, Ferris wheel lights the sky, giant
mechanical swing in the form of an Egyptian boat.
In the forest, voices, laughing. Just how leathery the flesh of my
own neck has become. As that man strides purposefully towards
him, I saw this fellow reach for something under his jacket tucked
right into his pants at the small of his back and think gun. My
pager set to vibrate. Soft first light of sun.
XXX
The aggression of toddlers or of squirrels. Theory of naming
evident when we call a black-capped chickadee a bird that more
accurately appears to wear a white mask. I carry a sleeping boy
up the stairs and to his bed.
The word on the net is that you are in France. A large one-story
pomo building on an even larger lot turns out to be a hair salon
(land use away from the city). How each McDonalds is most apt
to differ from one another lies in whatever special accommodation
is made for the play of toddlers. Aware of the dewpoint nearing
eighty degrees.
Irked at Adam's meddling, Hayley set a wedding date with Abe,
then later went to the beach with Mateo. After defending Kirk to
Scott, Sam stunned Kirk by insisting that they start their
honeymoon right away. Meanwhile, Nikkie tried to get Amy to
show interest in Nick, and then tried to get Nick to show interest
in Susan. Luke explained AIDS to Lucky.
On the couch, starting to watch a video (Gerard Depardieu as
Cyrano leaps and rants about the stage), I virtually swoon into a
deep sleep, to dream of a great wall of candy, sugar-coated drops
of licorice, white, pink, black. Simple male transfer protocol.
Three kinds of woodpeckers about these trees. Atmosphere is a
broth.
Old town graveyard after dark, the grass too high, lit only by lights
from the nearby church parking lot. A bowl of blueberry frozen
yogurt. Large sore on the roof of my mouth. The sweltering sky.
Hourglass frozen against the screen. First inverted whistle of a
cardinal in the poplar. T3 trunk line upgrade rollout – scan that!
Differentiate in a boy's mind gravity from magnetism from simple
suction. Small girl skating down the steepest of hills.
An icon for poetry (winged hearse). Woodpecker walks up the
trunk of tree. Light mottled on the large leaf. Squirrel growls.
XXXII
To look up at the impossible brightness would be fatal, tall cloud
full of human ash, the city itself missing, to be defined forever by
this absence, instance. Undelete function enabled. Nineteen years
later, a boy arrives at a demonstration. Don't Laos me up.
Hilltop forest stripped, winding private road arrives at an 'S'
shaped development of new construction (three models: Adelaide,
Bristol, Chaucer), through the mud into a shell of board and sheet
rock, cedar shake shingles, 65 surface choices for cabinets (I look
up in the closet right through the attic to the sky). Red tail hawk
threads the air.
This is what makes a rabbit hop. I shut my eyes and the dream
(cartoon samurai) continues. Tea too hot to sip. An elephant king
and a mouse, both made of cloth, equal in size. Tractor fed, the
old dot matrix looks robust and healthy.
Embodied poetics would be a more intriguing proposition. This
paragraph is called the Sicilian Defense. In the dream the reading
is a pretext for a party, the party a pretext for a seduction.
Radar reveals T-storms in green. Suitcase hangs by a strap from a
doorway, an effigy. Constant growl of the crickets. Instant in
which the engine turns over. When, in the corridor, he says to her,
"You model, don't you?" her reactions change totally, vague
flirtatiousness replace by tone composed in equal parts of fear and
anger, "Who told you? How do you know?"
Chem lit vs. fem lit. Channel surf the AM dial west of Dallas.
Poetics of the open mike: categories for people who write but
don't read. The curtains blow tho the window's shut. Give you the
world every 30 minutes. Later, this will all be handwriting, then
print. A flicker, in what should be an empty glade. Roadkill here is
different.
Held by its feet upside down, the turkey will twist its neck to keep
its head upright. Roadside stands sell old gas station signage,
decommissioned pumps perfect to decorate a tavern or gift shop.
Lone drivers heading south, route I-35, Fort Worth just a blur in
the rear view mirror. Bird feeder hangs from the tree.
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