from "8 a.m., Sunday, August 28, 2005"
by Patricia Smith


Now officially a bitch, I'm confounded by words--
all I've ever been is starving, fluid, and noise.
So I huff a huge sulk, thrust out my chest,
open wide my solo swallowing eye.

You must not know

Scarlet glare fixed on the trembling crescent,

I fly.

minus one

in the end, static
the tuner set to an inappropriate station
cable goes out in the storm
you never existed
in the moment
middle of night
when time stops
when the network stops
broadcasting
lines of grey fuzz
lies rest heavy
you again repeat an undisclosed
fabrication
a sham, would be deceit
if you had not already
disappeared

an early hour waiting in the past
misdirected play against tides chronic
and seamless
your notes linger

blackbirds have many ways
cold plums
white chickens in the rain

soak in salt water or
humid mountain air
the gravel trail unwinds
simultaneous wandering a figurative
explanation for moving from point to
point without the use
of any straight line

Foucault, from "Heterotopias"

Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.

"The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed." (Foucault, "Heterotopias")


perform a continuous utterance:
over a space, she clarified

recite the lyric
quality

that is

simultaneous
circles drawn in pencil
on a white board

contingent
or history laid out
on a table of elements:
artifacts, debris, fragments

each piece a present
intervention
between past
future

an ensemble of relations

proximity site grid
real unreal virtual

in the cemetery both
alive and dead
the illicit meeting
contained and
secret

time sliced into
pieces
laid out across

a horizon
at once moving forward
standing
still

inspiring and thoughtful articulation...Naropa Summer writing, and Thinking

michelle naka pierce : no use in a centre: Continual Surface

alongside 600 leagues base by base
green fields saunter knock it out and
away every 11th time
scores
how many can you list
recall statistics from previous
across the lawn
pass it call it blown across
an average telling
narrate experience told through
numbers rate players all the world's
a stage