I am
standing in the river and, absent any structural changes, I will still be
standing in the river. Absent any structural changes I am examining an inky pen
I found in the river. This was how I first gained access to Gertrude Stein’s
deathbed. Pull the curtain back and Gertrude Stein’s deathbed is there.
“Deathbeds are a leisure product,” the voice from above calls out. The voice
from above is a rescue pattern, the sincerely possessed dovetail center. I
forgot that I had started weeping just for the compensatory elation. When did I
get to be outside of being a woman? The woman without qualities. Around the
deathbed are many objects and beside each object a moment of private translation.
Communications are like whiskers jutting out sideways from the mouth, and we
are drinking wine and talking about being born.
I pick up an
object that surrounds the deathbed and I say to it, “I am looking for something
to write with.” My devotion to the good-enough object holds supreme. How my
bodysuit flows gently downstream. Once I stood over a facedown body and said
the words, “I am looking for something to write with.” No response from the
wrecked sprawl of limbs and I can’t believe I said, as if unaware of all that
was happening, “I am looking for something to write with.”
What was
happening was only forfeiture. All spaces that are evacuated are mourned while
we pass through them. My fantasy is for none of this to resolve. “Let it not
resolve,” said the woman face down burying herself. I was glad too about the
silence. My attention stops in the soft moment of the deathbed. Deathbeds are
slept in sometimes. And thrown out. Call up the image of the universe as a
whole. I am sorting the good-enough objects from the objects which merely
soothe.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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