THE IDEA OF “IDEA” AGAINST THE BANKS OF A GREAT LAKE
Family becomes a notion unchecked,
uninked.
A family is caught, yoked in a tree, a big tree. A tree of some ambition
& breadth.
White border surrounds, surmounts, absorbs the
surfeit of wavy lines.
Reducible by half. Reducible to 5 x 7.
Family as math problem. Solvable for ( ).
Idea of the word problem: world collapses again
into fangs. Dead
maples fugue off summer,
concise crystalline stasis, more like an adjunct to next year.
Back porch completely under ice & the family looks like this: [
drawing here ]
or
like this: [ drawing here ]
The blue line in this notebook is something like a third rail
that someone is consistently falling off
repeated until underlined one too many times;
emphasis becomes dismissal.
Family as ahistorical factoid:
Come armageddon Come
together
Come away, little subtrahend
Omissions are not omissions.
//
+++
SHE SCOURS THE RUGGED LANDSCAPE FOR “CULTURAL
MARKERS” & MEDICAL MARIJUANA
I am doing the best work of my life:
Spanish ships sailing westerly confront a warm
front & commit an affront to browner folk.
Always interested in what they call folk etymology;
this word doesn't mean this word as much
as
it means a wide aperture whence
“hums come.”
“bums come.” “rom-com.”
*
Smoky & unlike that font: we've discussed
a flattening, we've underscored
disjunctiveness. Performance
is not art, really. Performance
fantasizes,
infantilizes itself.
I can hear the foghorn whistle blowing but I won't be coming home—
*
The last soldiers left today
against
the woman in the hot-pink blouse standing outside her brownstone watching
the man of the year
walk by which was in fact a tightly wound coil of copper wire but with
chanting
among them, writers
one of whom slept with once one
of whom read under the covers always
the dust jacket
The soldiers are coming home but we're not sure what that means.
Not sure what it means in front of this wood stove
it should feel like home
it should feel like something, a priori,
spineless
//
+++
LOOKING FOR A WAY OUT
Despises unfettered intellectualism.
Plays well with others.
Is good with children.
Wears felt garments & displays a certain
jauntiness.
*
These roads are pocked with pocket-sized disappointments;
I remember them well. My small other has never been here, never seen
the asphalt I grew up walking, loathing.
*
Trying to find a sly opening into another generation;
trying to regenerate youth—that's what it's really about, right?
Stop signs tilt themselves toward chain-link
fences, aluminum cans, plastic bottles, wild bouquets of sun-tarnished
Queen Anne's Lace.
*
Gateway to Recreational Paradise.
*
“I'm not happy & I'm not sad” which is worse
than being happy or sad.
*
Court-ordered.
Filleted.
Pasteurized.
Still living the “other Latino experience.”
Falling so hard backwards, all vision disappeared.
All life. All life.
As the past participle, having lost all specificity.
//
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