after Jennifer K. Dick
1.
to understand fluorescence the right way to say
or speak
what the body cannot like a scent
at the peak violence, or predilection, an influence
or management system
organized in the way that spring flowers grow
on urban plots. some specific, cultivated, some
like weeds, leftover from previous owners,
remember landscape
2.
in the ocean
molecules, a song, geologic history
Ingrid I tell you, voices
resonating like waves
draw lines
sand founders
bubbles disperse, survive
as words on rock
pressed against an aging tide, a poem,
letters imprinted on a tree
pacify the rush.
a bluff a sinking
melody across minutes or
millennia
this sentiment livid
like heat across August
blood like screams
held back and distant
scattered like beach glass
and drowning
in cancer memento
a pre-historic era
3.
Ophelia I heard you in the train, your tangles, your roses lament and screech
into and out of the station. Blood of insufficiency or rain, a misread sigh, curse
of detail, anatomy, politics. I have decided it fits like a metaphor. A glove a leaf
a melody. Clarity nuanced like distant sound from every direction.
"a sharp silver glint of rail"
across exterior vibration limbs cross or break
veering according to narrative inclination,
having left you behind, all this time.
4.
an extrication, layering in timely arrangements of speech.
insert replacement words here.
5.
a story in versions
fallen syllables out of scheme
too soon for history
the train in the distance
rain, dissonance
I hear you, imagining
narratives out of sort and out of mind
mathematics of failure
what falls
between the gaps
in one postcard, an image of a girl, layered, purple, half smiling. the landscape, distinct and European, old stone buildings, a cafe, sipping coffee, facing the street, watching each passerby. a scene of symbolic space: we are here, we have discovered architecture, we may decide to never return home. a visual collaboration of time split, standing still.
one notices the slivers of pale flesh in the ash. she is come undone. flakes scatter in a breeze. it will be impossible to close our eyes without the smell, of ash, of flesh. heat amplified against flame and a forgotten history, never recorded by victors or anyone else. we tie our ends with neon ribbon, pretend there is a common story that would make us feel better, that we could remember fondly, that we could displace into lines of feeling. Pale, gruesome, emotion. she led us to believe there was another way. coming to this.
as an instruction in consequence one might recall a particular moment, a falling snow, unbearable sky, the witnessing of entire seconds lapsed and evicted. Dickinson sits in a box, the dog tangled on a rope, and insults play like rhythms across a gritty morning—one will not move from this fog voluntarily one will entice gravity and fail. sure, for every cause and consequence there is a lesson, an undetermined number of repetitions before the memories make any sense at all. oh Emily, we are here like shadows, quietly inserting marks on the page, wandering against, and prolific.
pieces of reflection, a series of blue lines, scattered in stories. photos of an old farm, buildings long gone, a single moment still before the storm. waves washing over. a voice in my head. hold each string for a moment longer, each note, sweet and floating. rhythms of a drum in sync, in my chest, an African drum beat in 3s, weaving, scattering, washing over. delirious blue water meets sky the endless horizon. once scented ideas on the wind, this still collapse. flickering.
Jill Darling is the author of Solve For (BlazeVOX, ebooks), begin with may: a series of moments (Finishing Line Press), and at the intersection of 3, a collaborative project with Laura Wetherington and Hannah Ensor (Dancing Girl Press). She's had work published in journals including /NOR, Aufgabe, 580 Split, Quarter After Eight, factorial, Rampike, Horse Less Review, Two Serious Ladies, the Spring Gun Press Journal, Denver Quarterly, and in the anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders. More info can be found at JillDarling.com.
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