i hate the impossibility of having no air bubbles in applied scotch tape strips as much as i hate titling unread words and unseen paintings

"Carving concentric circles into the air like achromatic moons, the sparrow wanes into a spiral, climbing ziggurats of fog."

I am capable of unoriginality. 

I am gushing with hindrance.  I am both a whitehot halogen bulb and a cracklingly frail wick.  I am a QWERTY-based lifeform.  I am a foxed, dusty textblock.  I am a Berber carpet.  I am a lintshred stuck to the toilet rim in the third-floor bathroom of a department store.  I am hexagonal.  I am a loquacious raven.  I am a theorem of continuity.  I am running beneath a twelve-rung wooden ladder.  I am a fresh box of checks.  I am swimming in unfiltered cider.  I am a togglebolt.  I am relinquishing my great power(s).        

And a logical argument housed in the basement of some glossy pages:  I cannot remember the last time I saw a bird climbing into a tower of fog in spherical ways the shape of oblique Earthly satellites and if I cannot remember this then it didn't exist and if it didn't exist then it is all irrelevant.

"Close your eyes."

"They are closed."

Hair and then fingertips.  Air purifier and bookshelf creaks.  

Sssskkkkkuuuurrrrrrtttttttcccchhhhhhhhhh and it holds it all together, somehow.      

 

there is a war being waged on my desk right now

she looks like a Zulu warrior priestess but her hands are empty.  they are balled into strong yet loose fists and one of them looks like it should be holding a spear.  it has that cylindrical gap like an action figure that comes with all those interchangeable weapons, perpetually ready to grasp on to something.  like we all are trying to do.  but she has that white face paint, and that heaving armor over her breasts.  she held someone's spongy lungs in her hands today and she directed the tribe onward with her wisdom today.  fearless in the skirmishes of intellect, wooden shields chinked with the weak attempts at her unshakable mettle.  i am so fucking glad she is on my side because all i can do is stand here and try to capture it all in a way that still allows me to be afraid of things like my own reflection. 

an industry waiting to be built

"It is so planes don't run into them at night, Liam" he answers his small boy.

That is one reason why the smokestacks have lights at the top of them, yes.  There are undoubtedly more reasons but I don't know them.

I can point out Orion because of his belt.  And occasionally one of the Dippers, if the night is angled properly and I am at the correct latitude.

"In some cities, maybe fifty or sixty years ago, those were the tallest structures they had, those smokestacks.  Before skyscrapers.  Stop squirming, Liam.  Look, see how tall that one is?  Now imagine there were three others stacked on top of that one.  That would be how big the one is in the place where Daddy was born."

The boy's breath smokes from his small mouth as he raises a hand into the wintery stars, grabbing at the distant chimney with mittened, woolen hands.