George Quasha

The trouble with paradise is you never want to be away from home. I make what calls me out. All gone before you know it. Words may drop passing color yet seeing you here now are born again, and again. Closing a word in the mouth feels the sound until the tongue can't stay still. To unmask is to go silent. Language makes no promise to communicate. An articulated sound has its own dream in the ear. Her presence in the room gives aroma to the syllables I voice. Now she's ready to draw eros from foreign bodies. It starts by focusing on the sounds beyond hearing, still felt. By she I mean who speaking animate configures. This is the time of alternative obscurities to see through. Through thoroughly, as a word weighs.

I'm feeling by ear. Consider them gods and not cruel but ecstatic. They have trick tongues and can't talk straight but use us as waves to curve words. In this moment we are here for their ride. Climb on under. Transport poetics in the transtraditionals, revering rumors revved high. We ask forgiveness for poem talk. I'm on her knees. She makes me say these things because she is a middle way like no other. The method is to wear me down to a base line vital pulse. Next pour right through carefully following the barely perceptible impulse. Almost dreams the state resists the name but go ahead and call it poetic that flares. Poetics remains neutral on its name but takes care when it comes to hers. There's a watch out on her names. It makes me wait until I have nothing else to fight with and then sets me loose. When I think what is being said I get a lump in the stomach. No go on the intellectual gizmo. Yes on any kind of lift, free run, no drift, too swift, the actual thing getting a lift. It hits the beat like rock bottom. The tongue gets hands on quick. The hearback suddenly gets high in the sense of crossing right on over.

I was a man and I was trying to save a woman in danger. I picked her up in my arms and flew. Flying like a frog swimming in air I ditched our nameless pursuer and landed. There was a guy waiting for us who looked like a king. Caught. Now I have to accept the punishment for saving the woman. First, we have to take a shower. The effect is to loosen the skin from the muscle until it peels off. The woman picks up the pieces of my skin and holds them in her hands and says:I will love each of these as I loved you. And I thought: This is what is called Fetish. And suddenly it came to me that the origin of the word is fe- as in female, soft, loving, silken — plus -tissue. Like tissues flying. Voicing particles waking in waves over a living body of water loose at last