To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Lisa Robertson: On Form (for Jane Ellison)

in which poems & poetics come together (J.R.)



You could say that form is learning
you can see form take shape
at the coronal suture’s first arcade
it’s explaining it’s appearing
it’s unestranged from enormity’s
prick of a spiny plant like a rose as
experimenting it’s bursting and
usually it’s repeating why is form
a dog as a horse as a deer as a
fish and a bramble a grater rapacious
the second cervical vertebrae is
repeating is a question we can
ask with our bodies and what is
a tooth coccyx is the beak of an ancient
dove below the sacrum the tip of
the sacrum places in the person a
sensation of slow form repeating it
doesn’t require its own skin to repeat
fox a foxtail a lizard as psoas
a small flask of modern oil at the throat
the repeat carries between bodies
what’s made in this space are theories
and thymus a rising of beneficial
smoke as thorax as guitar the hairs
exact and between bodies form’s not
ever without a stupendous body so
the repetition is never exact
this is why form is always learning
how as it moves across surfaces
on the cleft above the lips to be
repetition is never exact this is why
form is learning or becoming or how
as it moves across timely surfaces
including the intricately folded surfaces
sucked when kissing sometimes the lower
lip has a crease like a waking girl in
the real territory of the conceptual
the liver is a crown and it is a vessel
it constitutes our life form is folding
the full part is a vase the nostril is
cartilage connecting mineral salts
the root of the belly the palate a
celestial dome a vault a sky a
nylon-like connecting dissolving
palace the tongue is a stitch a root a
complex tissue made of crystalline constituents
as freefloating folds motivating
intestines as a nest the bowel is
blind the rectum founds it all the anus
is a ring a door a precipice the
nervous system orients vast complexities
to make them even less efficient we’re
trying to solve efficiency luckily
sphincter’s a crow the liver’s a
table a summit a choir a door the
tracheal artery is a country
flute the lungs are apples each part of the
heart is named differently but
it seems to be prettily resisting
generally heart is a vase with little
ears the spinal column is a canal
out towards the periphery and also
of marrow the thorax is also a
tortoise and a stall the ribs are fronds and
these are also in the same lake
they are spades the greater ribs are boats they
are maritime together the ribs form
a kind of anywhere-ness and anyone-ness
the teeth of a comb which is not only
a grooming implement but a tool for
their role as relations in a behaviour
as weavers the ribcage then their loom the
shoulder blades are plates and they make writing
pads or little desks these desks are winged
when our hands feel empty they are not empty
the clavicles are keys and they close and
open the gate between the throat and
sweetly there was a suture there
touch is a really unstable compound
metaphor but it does have a head the
radius is a tailor or a drum
stick a brooch and historically a hinge
the hand is a rustic cheeseplate the
same for the feet the fingers are a phalanx
of snakes or of fishes the skin is treebark
in this place the voice is touching you
it comes to a physiological
work this is a representational
problem something like memory
work this is a transformational work
about the domestic nature economy
sufficient yet imperceptible
it is medicinal the cheeks are melons
are bowls or concepts or clods the stomach
is a mouth nostrils are the lairs of little
animals or fish choirmaster names them
indistinguishable from anarchy
every cell’s means of turning every
thing into transcendent operatic
the heart as well as the liver we can
compare the liver to a city or
a mansion and the intestines are the
market gardens surrounding it the veins
are roads leading up to the city gates
no proper limit no verbal chain continually altering
the cardiac veins are wee snakes the ear’s
continually altering internal conditions
a measuring cup and a conch it
is among the kitchen utensils
between our nerve endings and our motor units
like the female sex that thrives behind
the earlobe there is a bony poppy
fucking wildly at the edge of capital
this experience can constitute a break
in sincerity density and scale
the helix of the ear is a bracelet
the ear is also a hive it produces
wax which is a humour it is the nest
of a swallow as well the eye sockets
are basins for washing grain the eye is
carnival artifice intrigue
wandering’s root the eyeball like a sun
like a cheek like a breast the white of the
eye is a riverpebble the glance is
a throw of stones the iris is a rain
on this conceptual meta-membrane
ah luxuriant nomad pubis
the eyelid is skirt the eyelashes are
the outer surface of the mind that
album berry or nymph pip barleycorn hill
or sparrows completely and ardently
send their action thriving foray touch
this suture right now

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