Kate Colby

You and I inhabit thresholds, clinging to neither here nor there, and to and: this is a threshold of no relief, of interrogative light and obviated shadows, of questions flattened between clapboard slides, in laboratories of hanging frames—in a potential frame, the next moment slumps beneath the shadow of the overhang. They call it earthquake weather, a day like this, of reflected light and leveling heat of no relief, of corners around which and angles of incidence jellied in consommé, molded in amber lunches of tea and impossible: no incidents or tension, no reflection. No striations: rather, bangle, a broken shoelace and what are we going to do about that hair? We were in a boat. You were navigating and I was tending the lines, which flew from my hands, flapping like live wires on the wind. You watched the shadow of our sail on the water through the light reflected in your face, conducted a depth sounding: You went under, but not overboard, swam away to plot reliefs of ocean floors. It is far too shallow here to die. for Chip Madden

Turning to weightless implements of gear-click hedging in instamatic blue, our ticking gaze in light like waves, overturning A lifeline, a forerunning wake of life rafts and instruments, luminal seconds in cesium skimmed threshold or eleventh hour draped across the doorjamb. We lack fear of flatness or our impalement on axes, blinking a reticle of stasis: turn it over and begin again, this dripping like TV test patterns. Let’s stay, I say, and buoy ourselves in river locks intercalated in channels or our fender-bent synapses, recycling this floating. Never believing in water torture or autisms as misfortune, we were counting gold in a pointillistic landscape of radiating boulevards. In Budapest, a necropolis of shifting foci grid-dots. Soviet heroes, missing limbs. The thought does not sadden us, but the calculation of sundials: whether flat or equatorial they always deliver this sublimating ice (we are tapping on the ceiling)

I mean to say I mean I keep meaning to I mean amending I mean correcting I mean qualifying I mean collecting I mean X + X + X and so forth I mean all possible values I mean adding I mean and also I mean pileups happen when you can’t see where you’re going I mean where you are I mean your hand in front of your face I mean my hand I mean if that’s all I can see I mean if that’s all I’m looking at I mean that’s not all I mean there is no end I mean this isn’t the beginning I mean only means I mean blow the house down with breathlessness I mean a house of breathlessness I mean the walls are braced against themselves I mean brace yourself I mean to take the house down with its own components I mean throw the whole deck at it I mean two-by-fours and oven mitts I mean rocks hucking them at walls of rocks I mean self-healing walls I mean with insipid pocks I mean BB dings in street signs I mean bullet holes in stop signs I mean to riddle I mean all signs point to “yes” I mean eyelids are designed to admit some light I mean sound I mean boom I mean faster than gravity I mean I am not equal to the work I mean I’m over my head I mean hovering I mean levitating I mean light as a feather wide as a plane I mean fight as a feather (infinitesimally) I mean I’m going to talk about it I mean talk about it by talking about talking about it I mean write about it I mean scrape it all towards me with the edge of my hand I mean like a spray of crumbs I mean pile I mean to pile up and get on top of I mean for the prospect I mean for the pea beneath the mattress I mean to feel the ceiling I mean to figure it like a mime I mean just imagine it I mean kiss it I mean I’m already running out of air I mean steam I mean fire I mean fight it I mean feed I mean with fire I mean fire is not finite only fuel I mean light is not finite only illumination I mean things to illuminate I mean to throw shadows I mean I have an important question: is this important?