ASHLEY VANDOORN

 


OPENING DEVICE

 

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( ( ? O ? ( (…      (scrim swirled thin…

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advice: when the knot in the wood-grain of your desk seems more shapely than anything you could compose at said desk, it is time it were time to adjust your idea of form

more sealed than my wrists over laptop fan-vibration is the lock-pick I wish you'd gift me, one with a broken-dragoned middle—two red slashes its heart—and green its tail and green its neck, its head so blue, with white whiskers, and a red-tasseled sheath

it is kind of like your toothbrush—in my house it isn't real, but a cleaner thing than sets of keys, your room across town erased, your name defaced, strange yet dragon-familiar, which is to say potato-mythological, or far away you face one way and I say I see you sway

by bringing you into this missing am I being self-indulgent or open? is there a difference? can I risk imperfection?

you could never be a stranger—you could never be stranger

not even in my dream where I dream I am the first boy born in the otherworld, and my teeth are a special ingredient in a popular dish

the "Spy-Tell Bot" will turn me in to the investors, who are also the inventors of the forest I run leaping away in, gridded with jumping-poles a few feet off the ground

my rumored-to-be-wonderful teeth in my mouth are a relief

when I reach you, you ask "why can't I touch your follower?," referring, I think, to the Spy-Tell Bot, who seems certain I am not what I'm supposed to be, watching me write something about watching

why is repetition delicious? the otherworld is marked by unchanging terrain and unmixed punctuation, tiered knot knot knob, and you included, not occluding

I wake tired in one eye, my other eye tied to you through the screen that is kind of like a door in a dream—formally a fantasy, formerly a famine

and the lock-pick is a letter opener, dear—

 

 


TYPO 8