Orlando White

A sound-loop hangs from the white gallows of the page: letter j strung up, the crook of her foot postmortem— leg sway. Mouth retches a vowelround o then from the roof gasps           a dark l slung. Is not innocent: the i with a white noose also around his neck, blindfolded, asphyxiated. Spaces within                    words are                       miniature knots that suspend letters— the paper always tightening.

I place a black cloth the size of a dot over his head. Wrap his entire miniscule body with a thread of my black hair. He lies there on a white sheet of paper and squirms like a dark cocoon, thinks he is going to transform. The letter, when it begins to lose color in a book never opened, becomes a macula in thought. And when read through the lens of a decimal point: see its dark fleck of a cranium, see expendable language—grab the letter j next to him, hold it like a tiny black scythe, behead the i and watch its dot head roll to the back of a sentence.

Under diagram                                  of a letter-less paragraph, block white.       Silent quadrates,          grid                         imperceptible where the arrangement                             cross-puzzles itself. Blank words         equidistant         by page         flectional         by print. Structure of paper           exists to limit communicatio of sound               of silence;              how word-types               appear, how fonts           distinguish                                 an ipseity  of language. The pages' margins         shape set-text                                 a voice unwrit; contains unseen               accent,                                pressure wave code. Where breath              within paper          functions                 a sensation thought, actions           charge                   form.                                      Without a point              an i will forget           its direction,              or a j with its curve            will not show                           its breadth                                   of line.