Renée Ashley

nothing left to worship. The three-tined sun is on a string. A chain to hang you on. A rope to coil when you’re done. Lately, a sharp-winged bird skims the dusk dragging the web-footed dark. Up there down there. Foreground. Background. What you can swing from.

I cannot hold such emptiness —the only meaning, the meaning we make & the way time tugs the body down, the body named bone, named brain, the color of dust & tremor, the soft meat & the bag it lives in. We beg from the body; it shivers & spits—we settle for desire, in- commensurate sorrow, for a life like too much water, shallow & wide, for enough salt to make a little sea.

At the festival of almost getting there Zeno pokes his head out halfway, asks directions, half-heartedly, to the train, admits he’s been riding on the tortoise, been running after arrows to watch them stand still. He understands course, path, way, even relative position (dichotomize, divide) but motion’s still a figment: distance halved and halved (split infinity, twin trajectory) the long, long way, and all that longing (two-fold, doubled) (moments, instants, continuous or discrete) for some unfamiliar end—such unforgiving progress, portioned, yes, bisected. A half-assed effort? No, he’s as good as got it. So much struggle and amends. Sure, we’re goddamned tired of this much waiting, but look! He’s halfway there.