...at Readings you pick up some essays by Capote for the Dougal. "A great stylist," reads the blurb-and that's enough. Surface is all I want-or can take-today.
At a crossroads you ask the traffic warden: "And if I go under the underpass?"
He says, "then you're fucked" and you'll end up in Model Town. Such an expressive language, is Punjabi.
A security guard at a checkpoint reads your number plate to his assistant in a matter-of-fact way. He's let himself go: beer belly, unshaven, the disheveled look of someone who's had enough of the the vain attempt to get at any order in his life. Over the hill and only sad eyes to show for it. As I pass him I do notice, though, that he has pink nail polish on a number of his fingernails. Some sort of closet transvestite? Who cares, bud. Give me the security ticket and let's move on...
Here's how it happens. I'm told three times but still don't get it. Something like: the money or an electronic version of it goes through and then we sign. Clear the field. Get the blank slate, pay your dues, and sink it. Don't look back, especially at the mirrors which are clouding over out of sympathy. The natural history of a mirror: the decay of silver at the edges, the flakiness peeling away; the brown dots of rust joining like split ink to form a map. Bit by bit, that's how it goes. The decaying images in your mind. the memory behind the mirror will collapse as well, like a pack of cards. There is no music in the silence. The silver will inherit the black (Akhmatova? You can't even remember now). But still,
in the centre of the mirror is the brightest hour of all.
I'll be damned if I spell in Americana.
Sound is the last thing to leave a house. We pass through. The earth a bridge, said the sufi. This house wasn't good for us, said the swami. What doesn't start well can never end well. Wandering tribes like us have nothing to inherit. I'm sick of shadows, she said.
she then undid the knot of mirror and of tapestry.
Take all the lines you can, cut them out from a book. The line of greatest need.
How to answer the heart? What was the question again? What will you write about when 110-A is gone? This is the point of wholly turning inward. The 'object' that does not exist, or something like that?
Looking for home,
from the memory.
There isn't much left. These islands of the heart.
(fragments by Kenneth Irby)
At a crossroads you ask the traffic warden: "And if I go under the underpass?"
He says, "then you're fucked" and you'll end up in Model Town. Such an expressive language, is Punjabi.
A security guard at a checkpoint reads your number plate to his assistant in a matter-of-fact way. He's let himself go: beer belly, unshaven, the disheveled look of someone who's had enough of the the vain attempt to get at any order in his life. Over the hill and only sad eyes to show for it. As I pass him I do notice, though, that he has pink nail polish on a number of his fingernails. Some sort of closet transvestite? Who cares, bud. Give me the security ticket and let's move on...
Here's how it happens. I'm told three times but still don't get it. Something like: the money or an electronic version of it goes through and then we sign. Clear the field. Get the blank slate, pay your dues, and sink it. Don't look back, especially at the mirrors which are clouding over out of sympathy. The natural history of a mirror: the decay of silver at the edges, the flakiness peeling away; the brown dots of rust joining like split ink to form a map. Bit by bit, that's how it goes. The decaying images in your mind. the memory behind the mirror will collapse as well, like a pack of cards. There is no music in the silence. The silver will inherit the black (Akhmatova? You can't even remember now). But still,
in the centre of the mirror is the brightest hour of all.
I'll be damned if I spell in Americana.
Sound is the last thing to leave a house. We pass through. The earth a bridge, said the sufi. This house wasn't good for us, said the swami. What doesn't start well can never end well. Wandering tribes like us have nothing to inherit. I'm sick of shadows, she said.
she then undid the knot of mirror and of tapestry.
Take all the lines you can, cut them out from a book. The line of greatest need.
How to answer the heart? What was the question again? What will you write about when 110-A is gone? This is the point of wholly turning inward. The 'object' that does not exist, or something like that?
Looking for home,
from the memory.
There isn't much left. These islands of the heart.
(fragments by Kenneth Irby)
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