PRIVACY
The insects hung in the air, frozen invisible pouches, contorted
parodies of medieval fate. How right for such an afternoon! Do
not pull down those varicose blinds. Motion and noise are one
thing. The red dragonfly behind the dangling rope is alone forever
but the grey has a hundred mates. Brushing aside the air with the
power of propagation they yield, like boulders at a hydro-electric
plant in Siberia, to the touch obscurity bestows on them via a
cook displaying a mound of fried food for two thousand fund
raisers, whose charitable ideas drool, green-eyed, onto the turnstile
of insect life so often compared to the web of human saturation
points in an adept squirming of an old, an approximately plowed
field. A dog’s obedience can’t be more touching. Everything is
allowed to pile up. And why not? Why is the shade thick? The
house is lumpy with numbness, protruding from below. And so
the quiet day is heavy from a body in a sink.
Expression concludes existence. Though though and though.
A thousand red spiders living in brick and that’s what refusing to
talk is like. Below is below and in is in and this is in. People are
surprised. They wake up to find the room, a tiny machine. This
is not the time for subjectivity. But it survives. Because space is
small. For example, love me but don’t talk to me. A size crosses
the street. The street asks, what’s going on? Some facts are to be
gotten around while others remain external to their shapes.
People in the kitchen picking at bones don’t want to pay
A thousand red spiders living in brick and that’s what refusing to
talk is like. Below is below and in is in and this is in. People are
surprised. They wake up to find the room, a tiny machine. This
is not the time for subjectivity. But it survives. Because space is
small. For example, love me but don’t talk to me. A size crosses
the street. The street asks, what’s going on? Some facts are to be
gotten around while others remain external to their shapes.
People in the kitchen picking at bones don’t want to pay
attention to the heavy air. We let them go on – they’re not hurt-
ing anybody. This special mode of address is used to captivate
inanimate objects, in our sanctuary. We look at our things because
they have our respect.
Source of the text - In the American Tree, edited by Ron Silliman. Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation, 1986, p. 162.
TJB: To what extent do these crisply-written sentences relate to each other, or to privacy? They do “hang in the air” & “captivate inanimate objects.”
ing anybody. This special mode of address is used to captivate
inanimate objects, in our sanctuary. We look at our things because
they have our respect.
Source of the text - In the American Tree, edited by Ron Silliman. Orono, ME: The National Poetry Foundation, 1986, p. 162.
TJB: To what extent do these crisply-written sentences relate to each other, or to privacy? They do “hang in the air” & “captivate inanimate objects.”
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