Duchamp’s Nude, Descending, Speaks

I’ve been here all along—not there, but wherethe light shifts like the stutter when a phonograph skipsjust slightly, the voice overlapping with its later

self—like l’esprit de l’escalier: what we think of afteron the stairs: that perfect retort, that witnever synched to the moment. I’ve been there

on the brink of the landing, something truerto tell you. My dream of one face. I tried holding stilleven slightly, but my legs kept overlapping with later:

I was flamenco and nun. Accordion. Fan-fold and warfrom two years in the future; the bodies already shippedback. Their faces on the staircase—there where

time pleats into new reasons. Our hands: broken guitarstrings; machinery unable to touch. I was a flip-book of women. A zoetrope in a movie—each later

spinning inside the last like regret. The self overand over, and no one at the bottom of the steps’descending. What should I have said? I was there,here—where later keeps overlapping too late.