/

Screen Dump 534

If on a winter's night a traveler

enters an empty room

and sits on the floor to read a book

about a reader reading a book

about a reader . . .

You wake to find yourself

peering through the befogged glass windows

of an old train

steaming across a snowy landscape . . .

Over and over . . . and over . . . my boys . . .

Navigating a snowstorm

in a rusted-out hulk of a car

whose ragtop sleeps with the fishes

is the beginning of a short story

about you . . . and not you . . .

You are about to empty

your deleted items folder . . .

You are about to knock on the door

of a no-longer empty room . . .

A reader reading about a reader

looks up . . . over his bifocals . . .

His bifocals reflect images

which tell of

lost time and lost loves . . .

A round-robin reunites players

with their parts . . .

The immensity of missing pieces

is enough to enjamb the patterns on a chessboard . . .

The white player is checked . . .

The remainder numbs . . .

You bump it up to the next level . . .

There are seven . . .

You are fed a lie . . . and enter a funhouse

with walls of mirrors . . .

Your crinoline costume speaks in tongues . . .

A tale of two . . .

going up . . . going down . . . going . . . going . . .

back to the back to the back to the . . .

In the distance . . . distortion . . .

If not for distortion, then? . . .

Trying to salvage the moment

or the memory of a moment

or the moment of a memory . . .

you return to . . . an empty room . . .

If on a winter's night a traveler . . .