Karen Mac Cormack

                          i

an option positions opposition "just so." delay is important. reasons are
optional. a job repeats itself. a job application is customary. mutations
here produce customary repeated applications only job.

the wooing of endurance anticipates what one wants to wake to
coffee is easy but it's not a battered chest of uncertain provenance
the employer takes on as provisional intimacy and the employee is increasingly absent
voice-mail will do for example
the tapestries do not reflect motion-less-strands
the air coincides with breathing
is a wait the species' cries for this insurance
does not pay article without abstract means
professionals times two
"they used philosophy as a tranquilizer",
first reveals concepts of roles
of private undisciplined motifs
learn to spell the habit of words
to describe responses to if not reasons for decisions leading to events
new words can't always be at hand in mind
so familiar words slide comfortably into descriptions that went before examination
there is comfort in repetition and carbohydrates complex or otherwise
a beauty of accuracy proves the mark subtle. refinement beckons another
age just as horrific or vital as "these times" but devoid of i.e.-mail and
cellular Bell. so obvious a manufacture there silence or another deafness attest to

to hold the matter of speech at becalmed points of place as such
on all fours three ways
day or debris is what accumulates (non) profit
untangled grace headfirst
such flickering on the screen numbers relate to
other numbers leave mention of others
the corner effect flattens to pan not 'pays'
adhering levity-surge obtain
glass is what's between two rivers and a lake
another country called "the view"

                     ii

in certain room there is no visual cushioning
this one isn't white though there are remnants of that stage towards decay
the floorboards display no polish
the smoke alarm's in a false, suspended ceiling …
so focus on the words on words a sculptural layer to reading
and in glass or cup from there one hand to another
as holding the idea of warmth determines an extent of undress
here yours hear mine if only whisper dusts the skin
the ear beheld a sense display becomes an afternoon
 

                            iii

to the southeast is the Earthquake Fault Picnic Area
walls white and also bare, the window frame for irrigation's
eucalyptus trees, mountains, closer is the telephone
more everyday an object, setting regardless
how one doesn't know where one is
each store in the same location as in the other malls
replicating themselves for the uninitiated
unlimited "enter here"
a particular obsession with automobile as personal space
(commuting is a job in between transfer)
from dysania to all told the map's weather stays with us
as any direction does
the scent of small and also white flowers
 
surrounded by the sound of other wingspans
doubtless shadows
or the Ana preening
on a ledge equivalent to reflection
 

             Ron Silliman
 
 

evolving door. Revolting odor. Slivers or sofa, splinters or couch. Curious at that face (your own) in the old photo (no sense of recognition whatsoever). The deer swim in the clear lake. Begin again, in again. The east is rad, the west is rotting. I didn’t say that. In a hang glider, hovering, suspended over farm fields, watching workers, silent, bending. Grease spots on the train window. Memories of underdevelopment. I won’t even meet you for another three years. As you push at last through lobby after lobby, voices ebbing, the soft light of the grand concourse, there is nothing (finally) to turn you aside, the crowd’s momentum become your own. For each and every sentence an equal but opposite sentence. Now I am in Death Valley, now on the moon. This desk is an ordered sequence of stacks of papers, files, books, mounds of chaos barely contained. Dry blood. When I saw this notebook, I knew it would be a poem. The tenor’s sex is a tool. The furnace shudders when it lights. Stretching the canvas, the text. Behind the desk is a filing cabinet turned sideways, its outer wall covered with notes, schedules, numbers. This is a hypothesis, no more than haltingly proposed. The gendered text (is a kind of hex). T’ai chi like a pitcher’s kick—Spahn, Marichal—but in slomo. The movie I wan see, dude, is Psycho Ward, man, that’s gonna be so icy, the reviews are boomin’. Serial number. Bright blue winter coat with an equally bright yellow umbrella. As the coffee steeps, say, raising the shade, a morning habit, each day’s particulars conjoined. Reiteration hidden. Ideo-radiology. Past sunset, the sky nearly colorless, about to go dark. Smashing bottles, chewing cabbage discards, chorus of the trash collectors from beneath the bedroom window, the odor from the cud of their great truck. There’s lots of free food in this job. Locked-in, projects that will not resolve eventually empty into a lonely logic, endless consequence of equation, terms providing terms, until final factors (“in the last instance”) fail to cancel out.