– Response to Celan/Borges et al.
I put down the book I’m reading to spoon up the last of my cereal and all at once it hits me: the enormous sadness of breakfast transferred from the act of reading to the act of eating, while staring at the wall opposite my seat at the table, a small burp caught in my throat
The dog barks at a man in the yard who says “Nice doggie†while glancing up at me when I open the door to look out, his body tensed like a ballplayer out in the field, an almost feminine delicate receptiveness, and “I’m here to read the meter,†he says, I get the dog inside, meanwhile a big fat fly has come in
What the dog seems to understand so well is the language of absence and presence – distance and proximity – hide and seek – the pleasure in finding and being found. The cat can only disappear – has the poise to do so even in plain sight – where’s the fun in that?
Never so happy being me as the moment I fell into the swimming pool one summer day, unable to swim, just stared down into the water and let it pull me in. I remember the distorted forms of other bodies through the underwater, various murmuring poses on the deck of the pool, no one having seen me go in, the surprise of not being able to breathe, but no panic, just delight in the sheer cleverness of almost drowning right in front of them
But I keep going back to the shock of noticing that the tight-wrapped blanket had been taken off to reveal – a pipe! sticking straight up from the ground like a limb that had been wounded all winter. It was spring, and the old man who usually sat in front of the house had been replaced by a boy who grinned at us as we passed
As he called it eventually the word itself sprang up from its prone form and ran towards him, keen-scented and low to the ground, and leaped into his open mouth blocking out all other sound
Two dark boys carried along the street by the white shoes in their hands
He stood so defiantly still on the porch that something had to give – language a line snapped and the wheel’s teeth clicking on air – the train seemed to go backwards then and the tracks—
All of his childhood slipped away in the time it took to wash his hands in the kitchen sink
How lovingly knife prepared lunch but then fork had to eat it all at once
Heart wanted to reach for the blinds, hand reached for the lamp. Hat got put on the chair
