Screen Dump 761

You recall Anne Carson on swimming:

. . . smoothing out the strokes in water filled with anxieties:

You can fail it with each stroke.

What does that mean, fail it? . . .

The poet, John Ashbery, blocked, envisioned

three empty oblong boxes to fill with words . . .

He dipped into The Cloud of Unknowing . . .

You like this idea and decide to try it . . .

filling a container with words

and whipping them into a poem . . .

Finding your way in a forest of well-crafted similes . . .

the rationales we muster . . .

What are you talking about? . . .

You know, to pass muster . . .

But is it that easy? . . .

No, not easy, there are huge holes . . .

yes, holes, that could trip you up

so that you'd have to start over again . . . Sisyphean . . . 

especially now, with the final station coming into view . . .

Nonetheless, . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 760

Illusory at best, yes? . . .

This freedom of treading the remains of the day

caressing costumes

pocketing smiles

not unlike a silent film

where the audience can see what the actors cannot . . .

Gawking at the exhibit

within the resilience of a gift shop

an oasis ensconced in the rude . . .

later mapping the yellow brick road

perhaps indefinitely

noting the binge of history

as a way to memorialize your having been here . . .

convincing the watcher at the gate that your words

are suitcased and ready for a weekend getaway . . .

Leila Forés

Screen Dump 759

As if at one remove . . . transcribing

the moment to moment with reverse innuendo . . .

a reason for everything

a reason for the body

a reason for the body of the other . . .

Squeezing through an eastern window

the process beginning years ago

adding language's decrepitude to the mix

of polishing a lens . . . a lens to better see . . .

To better see what? . . .

To better see anything . . . everything . . .

and look, there's even room for more . . .

Do you expect the end as predicted? . . .

howling through a nor'easter

(kidding, but how about if it were) . . .

then struggling to get the words right . . . 

another backstory arriving on the 1:05

with conspicuous palettes to color whatever 'scapes

you have prepared a pitch for . . .

Leila Forés

 

 Screen Dump 86

(reposted from Wednesday, June 11, 2014)

You enter a room . . . forget why . . . read . . . then not . . .
The dumbness of the day . . .

of putting one word in front of the other
of putting your hands in your pockets

of putting your hands in their pockets . . .
The intimation of intimacy . . .
of finding someone's clothes in your closet
of finding someone on the other side of the bed . . .
Have you forgotten about the tickets . . .
the quart of milk . . . low-fat . . .
the gestures . . . out of balance . . . of yet another day? . . .
The loneliness of long distance runners . . .
the scent of green filling your nostrils . . .
You can't wait . . . to tell someone . . .
To re-string the instrument . . . unplayed for far too long . . .
A question of sooner or later . . .
Your own wish to become a blankness . . . forestalled . . .

Saskia de Brauw

Screen Dump 758

You practice your lines in a two-way mirror

plagiarizing last night's notes

ghosts escaping into the semantic other

balancing tongues

at least believing such

that this is the way you have learned

to manage the world . . .

to manage you in the world . . .

Something will come undone . . .

You will then fondle happy moments

lipsyncing the middle of a chapter

from your childhood's diorama

carried along by the current . . .

your grocery list sheepishly revealing the answer 

to a question you have yet to ask . . .

the neighborhood's scammed

as odysseyites fill their foreigns with ancient myths . . .

Kate Barry

Screen Dump 757

Your earlier self inhabits the body . . .

A trolley on a back street searches for passengers

who were meant to be elsewhere . . .

You'd better not hear me say that! . . .

the weird aftertaste when you at least tried . . .

then the green of a standin

asleep in the other room . . .

Yes, perhaps the endgame

which if nothing else will stoke the confusion . . .

Someone will be kicked to the curb

before the overflow is reckoned with

and rendered inconsequential . . .

You began the conversation on a positive note . . .

a concert A? . . .

yes, that's it, you said, recognizing

the ramifications of a lost lyric

in the early morning, no, no, not that,

it wasn't that, I'm sure . . .

It's not about making the cut

the call and response . . . that sort of thing

reconfigured from audio files

dropped off at a transfer station . . .

It's about a musical suite in a stand of pines . . .

Can you imagine the confusion

of a left turn . . . then another . . . and another? . . .

Nervous motion, head jerks, tics, shouts . . .

The sinister recording of happenstance

followed by a rewind, a retelling . . .

Eva Torkarchuk