Wow Um Thanks
For one luxurious
moment the difference
in mass between a cup
of blood from the armpit
and a cup of blood from the ass
was equal, and equalled
the mass of a cup of blood
from the enemy.
The air is here. And goes →
For one luxurious
moment the difference
in mass between a cup
of blood from the kneecap
and a cup of blood from the gut
was equal, and equalled
the mass of a cup of blood
from the enemy.
Then goes ↔, ←
For one luxurious
moment the difference
in mass between a cup
of blood from the earlobe
and a cup of blood from the throat
was equal, and equalled
the mass of a cup of
blood from the enemy.
Then goes
Sidney, Bernard, Claire
It took seventeen years
for her suitors to get names,
but the researchers
somehow fit it in.
They were named
Purple-Beads,
Red-Beads and
Yellow-Beads. She was in love
with all of them;
the researchers, the suitors.
And she was more than happy
to help, because it’s the sort of thing
her sort of thing did,
and it resulted in them
getting another name.
No-Beads. The feral whom
of their association,
for all its conscience,
norms of practice,
obsequiousness and
sequencing makes one
think the dust
on the instruments
had once been part of
the instruments.
A bad intuition:
it came from something else.
I mean, if you tend to
find the nubs of many pencils
near a fenced-in space
you have to assume
a form was filled out
at some point,
and not just one point.
But if you find just one,
one nub, who knows? Or no nubs.
Say that some you find
are sharp
whereas some
are dull,
and from this fact you infer a tendency
you never expected.
This kind of distinction
can be understood
the way
the heat understands
the people suffering in it
while frost still
manages to form
three provinces away.
But why are you buying this?
You sit
like trash sits.
Your contemporaries
are saving their receipts
and they get off pretending
they have an urge to
take everything back.
Because you turned
your back on things.
Because you chose
to live near
each point of sale so
you could too.
The Ortolan
The film begins
with the title of the film
overlaid on an image from the film.
If the film is called
The Tamperer’s Mistress,
a character might say
around the end of the 1st 3rd
or near the beginning
of the 2nd 3rd of the film,
“You’re nothing
but a tamperer,
and I’m your mistress!”
But this film is called The Ortolan.
So they say, “She’s not a slut,
she knows how to prepare
ortolan for the table,
and she never did it for you
for a reason–a reason,
did you ever think about that?
Have you ever once taken a moment
to ask yourself why?
Has it ever occurred to you
that such a withholding
could signify something,
not about your relationship,
but about you? More than
being about you,
this is about what made you
you. Are you even capable
of imagining the ways in which
you would have to change yourself
in order to be the kind of person
who could sit down
to a perfectly-dressed ortolan,
its body pickled and roasted,
its head wrapped in bright cloth,
and be said to
deserve it?”
