Linger Or Recur #2: Near a sleeping, putative and villiform

(Being the second installment of a collaborative “pantoum in prose” composed by the editors [Janice Lee, Eric Lindley & Joe Milazzo] in anticipation of [out of nothing] #7, “time ⊕ (nothing ⇒ but)”; forthcoming, Fall / Winter 2013.)

Was it a month or an hour that sat like this, more cocked than coiled? The sketch artist makes a low music with her charcoal, her rough pad, her long waking dream of perpetration, residue and masquerade. Document of giddy power—he got mean before he really was allowed. Your eyes collaborate with the averted various. Document of giddy power—he got mean before he really was allowed. But now the words are soft, threaded candy; they unspool. Time has its expressions, but they appear ignorant of their own moods. You wait for feedback: you step back grinning; you vomit up a hot fist of pride. But now the words are soft, threaded candy; they unspool. Time is not spent, but depleted. You wait for feedback: you step back grinning; you vomit up a hot fist of pride. You have someone else’s dream of a screaming face, another of a sky-blue bear rubbing its back against a redwood, and then your own. Time does not speak, except in the points of excavated stone. The sun beats the high F# of mosquito wings, the grey screen a C, your fingers like small dry bones in a metal dish, so you think of Stravinsky, and you think of Stravinsky, and you think of the salt in blood. The sketch artist passes the drawing from her hand to yours, changing the singular state of your bereavement into one of misgiving’s transitions. Because your dreams matter so little and feel so much, they give credence to these otherwise forgotten days.