1913issue6online

161 ANOTHER FACSIMILE Put the needle down and enjoy the song. The cleanup of creatures has ended. Our collective ambition has laid waste to gutters and flutters alike. In floated a judiciously severered hand to write this letter addressed to your sister: I love her and there’s only one other way to put it: I dust her paintings when I can’t sleep which happens more frequently as her pallette grows brighter and more well read. The truth is, the less I drink, the less I feel the jewels buried in the soil. I’ve tried to reconcile this with my capacity for joy but end up pettifogging the issue with my pronunciation of “fog” and “jog” but “dog” is fine and a locked-up set of brakes reminds me of the time I yanked the leash on yours so hard he flew four feet. But there are certain forms of self-loathing we all know to be strictly ornamental and which carry us farther from each other and closer to a liquid crystal display image of ourselves, a frame in which irony is easy and nothing is accomplished. Either this or clutch to the worn tether of actual space in familiar dimensions that holds us to the ground and also together. The underside of my couch knows me dearly lately. Your foot knows the tile’s gentle tug against the skin of its sole following a recent evening’s sugary spill. Some know well the honeyed touch of synaesthesia but you really can taste a flame; it tastes like the bitterly wounded green of a maple freshly tapped for sap, but nothing like its syrup, made through a series of fires. Chalk that up to our frenzied hunt for resolution or at least a new way to cope with resignation. You could see the blood at work beneath my cheek.

1913issue6online

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