Sasha Steensen

Near the year 1000 we find Maximos Planudes nude writing to a friend in Asia Minor asking for parchment because the right quality is not for sale in his own neighborhood, presumably Constantinople. In the end, all he receives are some asses’ skins, which do not please him in the least, and a note: Dear Max, No parchment till the summer, months after the population begins to eat meat. Low yield should come as no surprise, our medieval animals being much smaller than their modern counterparts. Love, A. Minor

Perhaps the universe is an extinguished building with blue banners strung along and the forest, more like a commodity bordering bushes and asphalt, something else to string our blue banners on. Never was restoration swifter: the leafless trees, the asphalt less splintered and more splendid. Never was restoration swifter with its mightier solutions, less splintered and more splendid snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs. We please ourselves with mightier solutions, picnics under blue spruces snipers, dynamiters, colorful bombs the guardians of what we might call “home rights.” At picnics, under blue spruces we clamor after the news and its employees, the guardians of “home rights” “the media” mustering “one mind.” It’s news, the decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose some pretense of mustering “one mind” secures its truth. The decision to nobly save rather than meanly lose our flag secures its truth as a squirrel secures its nuts by hiding them in the ground. Our flag— a souvenir of having been here before a squirrel’s nuts, deep in the ground. But travel, travail, and The Method’s mistakes all souvenirs of having been here before, haunt us and taunt us and call us names. But travail, travel, and Method’s mistakes mark a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming. Each season haunts us and taunts us and calls us names until finally the universe is an extinguished building, a different season, nuts rotting, bulbs blooming and the forest, a commodity.

O dove, fly to Aleppo with my Byzantine ode And take my greeting to my kinsman. –Mahmoud Darwish Before I was born, I saw a tissue of ingenious detours, an inextricable tangle wreathed with mistake. Perhaps the ghost does not limp away, but rather forests flee me, frightened. Look, they are setting a place for loss, clearing the table for the first glow of antiquity. Here we see William T. Walters in his little library illuminated, carefully smoothing the lip of the continent. What form bounds forward from behind but The Atlantic Railroad Coastline Co.? The whole Roman Empire was sold by ascending auction in 193 A.D. A globe enclosed. Bottomless years. The train has stopped on the platform and no one is there, for these are the Public Days, when the “Poor Association” claims the museum’s building. As if bound by the knots of invention, I found a wrong road dotted with weeds and sorrows.

This is the room. Where mole guests are welcomed. At this moment you see the wedding table prepared for the mole guests. Rooms are heated with stoves. Rooms have been designed according to the patriarchal way of living. The family has, consists of, father, mather, sons and brides. There is no sex discrimination within the family. They artogether, have meal and altogether chat, but when the doors are clased. Mole guests are welcomed in “Selamlik” part. Femole guests are welcomed in “Harem” part. On such occasions mole guests are served via the cupboard in the wall which turns on its axis.