terror, the first word lighted, brushed across my eye, my eye, mother said, in that version. a chain of tears, one tear for every year, how summing up a year in that single painted drop. (87)
a white space intervening.
a white space intervening, white, white. that white light, static. questioning the first draft. this is not a literary work, I told him, this is not fussy. this is not my mother dusting the daisies. this is not domestic duty. this is not the idea. a preconception. this is it. the baby. the corpse. you can take that body and cut it up forever. this is a metaphor. a something. a meaning carried over. from one thing to the next. these are my leg hairs. the short hair that grows at the edge of my lips. lips, teeth. this is my little bow mouth. here it is. you will never know what I mean. when I say you I mean me. erasing all the I’s and using instead the third person. it alternates. an alternation, or alteration of generations. it changes. in other words. i.e., it changes. that is to say, it changes. it alters. it becomes something else, though its original form is still visible. one can trace that. he put a mark over it, a cross, but the word could still be read beneath it. ‘the effacement of the trace.’ to deface it, to cross it out, with a knife, to scar her face, his legs, that gesture, to whip the knife out, to scar it, the sign, these words do not match the thought. we will put an end to that longing. what thought there was we do not know. we will never discover it. it is not there. it is gone, or it never existed. impure. a fig leaf, someone said, of my imagination. covering it. (89-90)
No comments:
Post a Comment