In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

22 Ats’íísts’in Below the skull there is part of a letter shaped like a bone. But the skull is not a skull; it is a black dot with white teeth. And the piece of the letter under it is not really a bone, rather a dark spine. This is not the end of language. When it was alive it had a ribcage; each rib taken out by small pincers the way strands of eyelash are removed from eyelids. And the dot used to have eyes— white like two grains of salt. But they were dissolved by two drops of ink. The way a letter fades on the page after many years of reading or how it soaks into a fingerprint and forgets itself. The way a word tries to breathe inside a closed book; the way a letter shivers when a page is turned. Because underneath sound there is thought. Language, a complete structure within the white coffin of paper. If you shake it and listen, it will move, rattle like bones on the page. ...

Share