Aaron Shurin

Once we were in the loop . . . slick with information and the luster of good timing. We folded our clothes. Once we stood up before the standing vigils,before the popping vats,before the annotated lists of marshaled forces with their Venn diagrams like anxious zygotes, their paratactic chasms . . .before the set of whirligig blades, modular torrent. We folded our clothes. Once we remembered to get up to pee . . . and how to pee in a gleaming bowl . . . soaked as we were in gin and coconut, licorice water with catalpa buds, golden beet syrup in Johnny Walker Blue and a beautiful blur like August fog, cantilevered over the headlands . . . We tucked into the crevices of the mattress pad twirling our auburn braids, or woke up at the nick of light and practiced folding our clothes. Our pod printed headbands with hourly updates, announcing the traversals of green-shouldered hawks through the downtown loop, of gillyfish threading the north canals, of the discovery of electron calligraphy or a new method of washing brine. We smoothed our feathers like birds do, and twitched ourselves into warm heaps, and followed the fourth hand on the platinum clocks sweeping in arcs from left to right, up and down, in and out . . . We were steeped in watchfulness, fully suspended, itinerant floaters — ocean of air — among  the ozone lily pads and imbrex domes, the busting thickets of nutmeg, and geode malls. At night we told stories about the future with clairvoyant certainty. Our clothing was spectacular and fit to a T. We admired each other with ferocity.

Transfixed to the, by the, on the congruities, who is herself a vanishing point coming to closure — dusky flutter — trilling away like a watchdog on drugged sop, channeling her mother and grandmother who’ve engraved on her locket phrases in script: “glide on a blade” and “rustling precedes the shuck.” This is not my teeming fate, my rind, my roiling ellipsis or valedictory spray of myrrh. Always it’s morning, afternoon or evening — the loot of hours — a magic sack grasping vacuum but heavy in the hand, and from which, together, we pull a swarm of telepathic bees, melons beached in a green bin, a lithograph of the city from its crumbling ramparts, crackled pitchers and the mouth of a cave. Perhaps this is my open weave, my phantom rialto or plume of light. We bow to each other in the mash of flickering things. We are completely surrounded.

A heave of afternoon light pulls a tulip from the turf, a bower for locusts, a cup of shells. The farmhouse tilts, a bent shadow on wheels. In cedar rooms a family is molded, silent, wrapped in the wire of steel eyes and stopped voice, romantic ash. This is not my house, my ghost, my uninvited guest, my lost labor of love, my thicket or grease, my JPEG gessoed or rawhide suit. The yellow light throbs like an internal organ — soft body of an overture to insect sounds — sapling of a new world — whose future awaits me at the tilting window of my own domestic hut. Perhaps this is my mesh of hours, my muscular ache, my guardian sash, twist of rope carved around an old maple trunk, my rod of power red with anticipatory friction at the edge of an emerging set of planetary rings. Stained ochre by the air I pitch forward, a vanilla-scented pear that floats or falls. In the rattan chair on the front porch by the blistered boards of the front door a figure of tar watches. Cool dust sparkles and settles. Shadows have made me visible. An empty wagon flares on the hillside.

We were application — aerial shapes investigating their causes as they unfolded their wandering life — possessed of temper, parents, talent, fancy — in books in which characters redeem being from the hands of infidels. I feel soaring pleasure. When I was thirteen I opened my father — title page of my book —to explain exploded powers warmed by a glance. To penetrate the ocean behind the elements and give names — fidelity — from a stream of fire reduced to electricity — over the malignity of an alarming bed — the brightness of a familiar eye commences connection: These are the faces cooped up in one place, and his sweetest voice hiding how the blood circulates, and my peculiar trembled body, the seat of beauty. At the end of two years every object inherited human feelings. I paused and brain exemplified generation. His child pursuing these reflections. My pale cheek and tremendous secrets of fingers. Winter, spring passed — watch the blossom — it breathed hard —convulsive muscles of pearly whiteness — with his watery eyes disturbed by the first kiss traversing my bedchamber. His eyes held up the curtain of the bed. I remained listening, unfinished. My food its white steeple drenched by the rain. We ascended into my room, putting my hands before my eyes —tingle — save me and save me — anticipated with such nervous joy I became capable of shooting forth from the trees — it was a divine spring — that night drawing me out I felt the sensations of others. When shown the body they saw permission — I believe in innocence notwithstanding temptation — whom you loved was a creature who’d fill the air with birds serving you — feelings worked up by events — to wean us fro our future prospects towards a tenderness of fainting limbs, a type of me. I was encompassed by a bodily cloud. I remained rushing at the window. They congregated around me, the unstained pinnacle. I arrived at the same lulling sounds: the giver of oblivion. The ascent is solemn, curling in wreaths — I sat upon the glittering peaks — swelled with sunlight over your narrow beds. I beheld the figure of a man at some distance. As he approached a mist came over my eyes. You are community. Instinctively lying down I covered myself with little winged animals, light from my eyes. Spreading my cloak I covered the ground. One part was open. It was a paradise filled with milk. Uttering a few sounds the young man had been filled up. I awoke into my voice by his means — sun on the red leaves — mounted high in the heavens using gesticulations and a gush of tears. Feelings of kindness and gentleness overcame me. Fringed by deep lashes, I contemplated my companyion…