From “Velocity but No Location”

123 1 Thought flies above the world and leaves it naked to the waist. Treetops bare but for nests of mistletoe, records stored in their dna. There’s no escape, you say, from the matter of fact, insistent, particular. Knife, leaf, bud, feather, hair, shell. If you cannot distinguish between trees, no use wishing it were winter, sea in front of your eyes, wind blowing. The doors of sense perception may droop no matter what there is to see. The environment introduces notions of more or less, trough or swell, cells suspended in undefined middle age. Where the unending rain falls on a group of chickens, that is where the color is. 2 With transcendent assertiveness our concept of spirit poses, denying its tie to reference standards in the brain and its frailty. But where should we point to show the mind is in pain? Assertive mess. Can we compare it to pushing the blanket down to our navel? a summer day? phenomenal cleavage? How ghostly the past, daring us to break its barrier. Yet insists that nothing we do is without connection to our embryonic development. Would a small vagina be a sign of refinement, like having no appetite? Or more like red pants seen across the expanse of the Rhine? FROM “VELOCITY BUT NO LOCATION.” ROSMARIE WALDROP 124 3 What, moreover, could break the horizon better than making love in a train, a moviehouse, the Egyptian section of the Met? The meaning of a word incorporates the world into our language. A trace of light from a distance, bruised edges, promise of orgasm, on tiptoe across the floor like a child’s winged wonder, or hopping on one leg, a change of opinion, a new day. We have our plan and hold it open to its possibilities. But perspective means gradation of importance, of feelings about the infinitude of dots in the matrix, the matter. The way aging sharpens traits that in childhood were blurred by potential and the softness of young skin. Light implies shadows. And yes, on the page this word, trace, scar. ...