Move dedication before epigraph

127 files changed, 272 insertions, 136 deletions

@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">100 lines</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Whenever you call me friend<br />I fall down on my knees and cry<br />because I know it’s the only thing<br />never to happen before in this<br />life is something you can’t see<br />it’s a pillow under a <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">hook shot</a><br /><a href="lovesong.html">I want to tell you something anything</a><br />but you are there and I am here<br />we are <a href="howtoread.html">trapped inside ourselves</a><br />and the distance is too far<br />you are something that I would tell<br /><a href="no-nothing.html">would be nothing</a> before too long<br />you are not the finisher of dreams<br />you are the beginning of <a href="in-bed.html">nightmares</a><br />or waking but I’m not sure which<br />this <a href="poetry-time.html">letter is for you</a> in the future<br />it will lead you on the path<br />of goodness or of rightness or of<br />wrong people and right meanings<br />or the meaning will be hidden<br />or wrestling the demon I will have become<br />restless under the starlight<br />it’s too bright here to think<br />the negatives would be pitch black<br />darkness of a silver mine<br />there are <a href="plant.html">no trees</a> here<br />where have you been where are you now<br />I am no longer here or there<br />you are anywhere or are you<br />up in the clouds is a ghost<br />he is white and blue like a cloud<br />he paints with his teeth<br />he paints the rainbow before midnight<br />that you can see from your window<br />staring out under the sunlight<br />through the gauze curtains<br /><a href="mountain.html">over the high mountain</a> far away<br />that is covered over with snow<br />past the rivers and forests<br />that lie awake under Orion<br />hunting the bull that runs forever<br />just out of his reach<br />pointing the way for the two of us<br />to join together in song or dance<br />or that other thing and sing<br />the Grinch down off Mount Crumpet<br /><a href="moon-drowning.html">his heart breaking his chest</a><br />thumping with the beat<br />his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpxmlZ2hyM">little dog too</a> running running<br />with the bull full of laughter and blood<br />he can’t see it anymore because it’s become him<br />we are trapped he says we are<br />trapped in ourselves it turns out<br />that all along it wasn’t you or me<br />but he and her or her and him or<br />he and he or she and she or they<br />even they tell us that nothing has happened<br />even they know that it’s a big joke<br />one more thing to know before the death<br />we are crying like crocodiles<br />before their loved ones’ coffins<br />we are bellowing with grief like buffalo<br />on a berth of wild oxen<br />we are wailing our clothes are in rags<br /><a href="i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html">we want</a> <a href="fire.html">we want</a> <a href="lovesong.html">we want</a><br />but never can we get<br />what is it<br />we don’t know what it is<br />but it’s something it’s anything<br />it’s too many people or not enough<br />it’s too few trees we need more<br />beavers to build riverdams we need<br />grapes too or <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245576">plums</a> from the ice box<br />or an ice box even would be nice<br />all I have is this cube isn’t that right<br />or is a sphere a cube a donut a coffee<br />cup your hands in mine yes that’s right<br />now bring the water to your face<br />clear and cool and<br />full of something<br />what is it wanting<br />or yearning<br />I can see in your eyes they’re clear now<br />they are as clear as a running stream<br />or the sky that’s clear right<br />or the water that is in the Bahamas<br />because I hear that’s clear<br />you’re as clear as the sound of a bell<br />you’re as clear as the <a href="table_contents.html">braying of horses</a><br />you’re as clear as the glass in God’s eye<br />and I<br />I’m as dull as an ox plowing<br /><a href="last-passenger.html">through fields in his yoke</a><br />I’m as dull as clouded amber<br />I’m dull as you find me<br />tonight after dinner<br />I’m reading the crossword<br />you’re sitting beside me<br />you’re watching TV.</p>
@@ -30,6 +30,11 @@ $for(include-before)$ $include-before$ $endfor$
         $if(title)$<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>$endif$
         $if(subtitle)$<h1 class="subtitle">$subtitle$</h1>$endif$
 
+        $if(dedication)$
+        <!-- dedication -->
+        <div class="dedication">$dedication$</div>
+        $endif$
+
         $if(epigraph.content)$
         <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
@@ -43,10 +48,6 @@ $for(include-before)$ $include-before$ $endfor$
         <div class="epigraph-attrib">$epigraph.attrib$</div>
         $endif$
         $endif$
-        $if(dedication)$
-        <!-- dedication -->
-        <div class="dedication">$dedication$</div>
-        $endif$
     </header>
 
     <section class="thing $genre$">
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">About the author</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">(not pictured)</h1>
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         The body that surrounds him is his, but his insides are not.
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <table>
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">AMBER alert</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/20/abducted/?page=full">Apparently it does nothing.</a>
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <figure>
@@ -23,13 +23,14 @@
         <h1 class="title">And</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/oct/28/margaret-atwood-q-a"><p>“What is your favorite word?”</p>
 <p>“And. It is so hopeful.”</p></a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Margaret Atwood</div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>And you were there in the start of it all<br />and you folded your <a href="cold-wind.html">hands like little doves</a><br />that would fly away like an afterthought<br />and you turned to me the window light on your face<br />and you asked me something that I did not recognize<br />like a great throng of people who are not you<br />and I asked are we in a <a href="boar.html">church</a><br />and you answered with the look on your face<br />of someone <a href="roughgloves.html">grieving something gone</a> for years<br /> but that they had been reminded of<br />by a catch in the light or in someone’s voice<br />and I think maybe it could have been mine<br />and I looked away thickly my head was in jelly<br />and I didn’t get an answer from you but I got one</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The angel to Abraham</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear:<br />what if you miss my small voice amongst the creaking<br />of your own grief, kill your son unknowing<br />of what he will be, and commit Israel to nothing?</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">On seeing the panorama of the Apollo 11 landing site</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>So it’s the <a href="deathstrumpet.html">fucking moon</a>. Big deal. As if<br />you haven’t seen it before, hanging in the sky<br />like a piece of <a href="roughgloves.html">rotten meat</a> nailed to the wall,</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Ars poetica</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>What is poetry? <a href="words-meaning.html">Poetry is.</a> Inasmuch as life is, so is poetry. Here is the problem: life is very big and complex. Human beings are neither. We are small, simple beings that don’t want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us, within us, as a part of us, all the hours of every day. We much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces, staring us back with a look of utter contempt. This is why many people are depressed.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Art</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Paul was writing in his diary about art.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Axe</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees. Or rather he went into the trees to chop wood. He wasn’t sure. Either way it helped him think. Last time he’d gone out, he’d had an idea for a shoe-insert company he could start called “Paul’s Bunyons.” He chuckled to himself as he shouldered his axe and went into the forest.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The Big Dipper</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>After searching for days or even months<br />I finally find it reclining lazily<br /><a href="finding-the-lion.html">above the peaks</a> above the city as if to ask<br />Did you miss me? Yes very much I reply<br />and rush to embrace it but it smiles<br />and recoils and tells me No no you<br />have to try harder than that it says<br />I do not give myself up so easily</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The boar</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Now the ticking clocks scare me.<br />The <a href="mountain.html">empty</a> rooms, clock towers, belfries;<br />I am terrified by them all.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Boy on the bus</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>When he said <a href="mountain.html">Bible</a> I heard his southern accent<br />and he had a face I expect all pastors must have<br />a round open honest face<br />that will always be a boy’s face<br />though its owner may rightly call himself a man<br />near my age though I hardly call myself a man</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Building</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em><a href="toilet.html">ART and CRAFT</a> are only the inside and outside of the same building. The ceiling is</em>—here he put his eraser to his bottom lip, thinking. He crossed out <em><del>The ceiling is.</del></em> <em>The floor is reality and the ceiling is <del>aspiration</del> <del>desire</del> that which is desired. CRAFT is building a <a href="boar.html">chair</a> from wood. ART is using the wood as a substrate for an emotional <a href="poetry-time.html">message to a future person</a>, the READER / VIEWER.</em></p>
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">Call me</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">aural pleasure</h1>
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="https://www.facebook.com/kittensruleforever38"><p>compiled thru Facebook statuses of the author</p></a>
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Like <em>40</em> as I challenge anyone to come too!<br />It’s like you’re the epitome of lame!<br />She’s all <em>I am SOOOO CONFUSED</em><br />Aw yeah she got <a href="roughgloves.html">word from yarn</a>.<br />—but technically it’s a pretty sweet, huh?</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Cereal</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He woke up after eleven and didn’t go <a href="time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html">outside</a> all day, not even to his Writing Shack. What did he do?</p>
@@ -23,8 +23,9 @@
         <h1 class="title">Cold wind</h1>
         
 
-                        <!-- dedication -->
+                <!-- dedication -->
         <div class="dedication">Justin</div>
+        
             </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Creation myth</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>So two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings<br />walk into a bar. One turns to the other and says,<br />“Did you remember to check the end state<br />of that simulation we were running?” The other<br />says, “No, I thought that you did?” To which<br />the first replies, “<a href="movingsideways.html">Oh shit</a>, we missed it.<br />I suppose we must do all of this again. Barkeep,</p>
@@ -64,6 +64,8 @@ h2 {
 /* Epigraph & Dedication */
 .epigraph {
     text-align: right;
+    font-size: 10pt;
+    font-style: italic;
 }
 .epigraph p {
     margin: 0;
@@ -71,6 +73,8 @@ h2 {
 .epigraph-attrib {
     text-align: right;
     margin-top: 0;
+    font-size: 10pt;
+    font-style: italic;
 }
 .epigraph-attrib:before {
     content: '– ';
@@ -78,7 +82,7 @@ h2 {
 
 .dedication {
     font-style: italic;
-    text-align: right;
+    font-size: 10pt;
 }
 .dedication:before {
     content: 'for ';
@@ -91,4 +95,10 @@ nav {
     margin: auto;
     text-align: center;
 }
+nav .prevlink:before {
+    content: '« '
+}
+nav .nextlink:after {
+    content: ' »'
+}
 /* }}} */
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Dead man</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>A dead man finds his way into our <a href="words-meaning.html">hearts</a><br />simply by opening the door and walking in.<br />He pours himself a drink, speaks aimlessly<br />about hunting or some bats he saw<br />on the way over, wheeling around each other.<br />Look how <a href="moongone.html">they spin</a>, he says, it’s like the<br />ripples atoms make as they hurl past each other<br />in the space between their bodies.<br />We mention the eels at the aquarium, how<br />their bodies <a href="spittle.html">knot while mating</a>. The dead man<br />was a boyscout once, and tied a lot of knots.<br />His favorite was the one with the rabbit<br />and the hole, and the rabbit going in and out<br />and around the tree. The dead man liked it<br />because he liked to pretend that the rabbit<br />was running from a fox, and the rabbit<br />always ended up safe, back in his hole.</p>
@@ -23,12 +23,13 @@
         <h1 class="title">The Death Zone</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/11/19/245996903/embracing-life-and-death">And my life became death.</a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Philip Gould</div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <figure>
@@ -23,12 +23,13 @@
         <h1 class="title">Death’s trumpet</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <p>So Death plays his little <a href="apollo11.html">fucking</a> trumpet. So what, says the boy.</p>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Larry Levis</div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>He didn’t have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing,<br />top to bottom. It gleamed like maybe a tomato on the vine<br />begging to be picked and thrown on some caprese. Death loved caprese.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Dream</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>It had gotten cold. He went to lay down <a href="in-bed.html">in bed</a> with a pad and paper. He began to write. Although he hadn’t tried it much in bed before, he liked it mostly. His arm got tired journeying across the page like a series of switchbacks down the wall of the Grand Canyon. He wrote this down in the margin, for later:</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Early</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em>YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED</em> he sat on the couch at home while his mother <a href="real-writer.html">watched TV</a> and smoked. <a href="when-im-sorry-i.html">Dinner had been chicken</a> and peas with <a href="shipwright.html">milk</a> and afterward Paul and his mother sat on opposite ends of the couch. At intervals she would look sideways at Paul writing. He pretended not to notice.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Elegy for an alternate self</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Say there are no words. Say that we are conjoined<br />from birth, or better still, say we are myself.<br />—But I still talk to myself, I build my world<br />through language, so if we say there are <a href="hymnal.html">no words</a><br />this is not enough. Say we are instead some animal,<br />or better yet, <a href="plant.html">a plant</a>, or a flagellum motoring<br />aimlessly around. (Say that humans are the only things<br />that reason. Say that we’re the <a href="movingsideways.html">only things that worry</a>.)</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">epigraph</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">An epigraph</h1>
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of <a href="spittle.html">other lovers</a> and queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to <a href="deathstrumpet.html">death</a>, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.</p>
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">Ex machina</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/sugar/cohen-text">with lines from National Geographic</a>
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Bottom of the drink: they had<br />to go. The Coke machine, the snack<br />machine, the deep fryer. Hoisted</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Exasperated</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I didn’t write this sestina yesterday.<br />It’s the first time I fell behind in my task<br />and hopefully, the only time it will.<br />This means that today I must write two<br />sestinas. If I don’t write them today, I<br />will have to write two later down the line.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Father</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things” he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed. He wondered who built the shed for the first time since he’d been going out there. “Mom who built the shed out back” he asked. “That was your father” she said.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Feeding the raven</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life. For me, it was last Thursday. I was reading some translation of a Japanese translation of “The Raven” in which the Poe and the raven become friends. At one point the raven gets very sick and Poe feeds him at his bedside and nurses him back to health. The story was very heartwarming and sad at the same time and my tears were welling up when suddenly I heard a knock on my door.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Finding the Lion</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Tonight, as I look up, the stars<br />hide themselves in shame. <a href="moongone.html">There is no moon</a>.<br />The sky is black, like my desk,</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Fire</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown. “What the hell do you think you’re doing” she hollered as Paul watched the shed. “I’m burning the shed down” he said smiling “isn’t it warm?” “It’s warm enough out here without that burning down” she said “go get the hose and put this thing out.” “But Mom—” “Do it” she said in the tone of voice that meant Do it now. He went around the side of the house screwed the nozzle on grabbed the end of the hose pulled it around the house and waited for water to come out the end. <a href="hard-game.html">When it did it was not in a very strong stream.</a> “I don’t think this is going to work” Paul said to his mother. “God damn it I have to call the Fire Department” she said and went inside the house. The shed continued in its burning.</p>
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">Look</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">a found typewriter poem</h1>
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ALdlAAAAMAAJ&amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;q=older+than">Is he older</a>? I asked her. And I never got an answer, because at the moment she disappeared in a puff of smoke. I like to think nothing ever happened to her save that she went over to the spirit realm. I usually know better though.</p>
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Look, I say—look here—<br />at this <a href="planks.html">old place<br />where nothing changes</a>.<br />Look at the people<br />who pass by. Look at<br />the trees. The flowers<br />full of wanting: look<br /><a href="squirrel.html">how full they are</a> with<br />color. Look how they mock<br />us, empty people who<br />must fill themselves<br />with changes—emptiness.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Hands</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing. They were <a href="weplayedthosegamestoo.html">dry and cracked in places</a>. He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for some lotion.</p>
@@ -23,8 +23,9 @@
         <h1 class="title">A hard game</h1>
         
 
-                        <!-- dedication -->
+                <!-- dedication -->
         <div class="dedication">Jim Henson</div>
+        
             </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Hardware</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday. “I’m glad to see you’ve taken my advice for once” she said. “What do you mean.” “Applying to work at the Hardware Store. I’m <a href="sixteenth-chapel.html">proud of you</a> Paul.”</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">How it happened</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I was away on vacation when I heard—<br />someone sat at my desk while I was away.<br />They took my pen, while I was taking<br />surf lessons, and wrote the sun into the sky.<br />They pre-approved the earth and the waters,<br />and all of the living things, without even<br />having the decency to text me. It was not I<br />who was behind the phrase “creeping things.”<br />When I got back, of course I was pissed,<br />but it was <a href="shipwright.html">already written</a> into the policy.<br />I’m just saying: don’t blame me for Cain<br />killing Abel. That was a murder. I’m not a cop.<br />The Tower of Babel fell on its own. The ark<br />never saw a single drop of rain. I’m <a href="problems.html">the drunk</a><br />sitting on the curb who just pissed his pants,<br />holding up a sign asking where I am.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">How to read this</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>This book is an exploration of life, of all possible lives that could be lived. Each of the poems contained herein have been written by a different person, with his own history, culture, and emotions. True, they are all related, but no more than any of us is related through our genetics, our shared planet, or our yearnings.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Hymnal</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em>It’s all <a href="joke.html">jokes</a></em> Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal. He had been writing non-stop all day, because he didn’t count pee- or cigarette- breaks. <em>All art is an inside joke. The symbology involved must be</em>—and here he put down his pen and held his head in his hands. He could never think of the word—he said often that he had no words. He opened to a new page in his Hymnal. On the top of it was written in bold script <em><strong>HYMN 386: JOKES</strong></em>.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">I am</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I am a great pillar of <a href="deathstrumpet.html">white smoke</a>.<br />I am Lot’s nameless wife encased in salt.<br />I am the wound on Christ’s back as he moans<br />with the pounding of a hammer on his wrist.<br />I am the nail that holds my house together.<br />It is a strong house, built on a good foundation.<br />In the winter, it is warm and crawling things<br />cannot get in. This house will never burn down.<br />It is the house that I built, with my body<br />and with my strength. I am the only one who lives<br />here. I am both father and mother to a race<br />of <a href="plant.html">dust motes that worship me as a god</a>. I have<br />monuments built daily in my honor in dark<br />corners around the house. I destroy all of them<br />before I go to bed, but in the morning<br />there are still more. I don’t think I know<br />where all of them are. I <a href="howithappened.html">don’t think</a> I can get<br />to all of them anymore. There are too many.</p>
@@ -23,11 +23,12 @@
         <h1 class="title">I think it’s you (but it’s not)</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="i-think-its-you">When you fall in love everyone looks the same.</a>
                     </div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I thought I saw you walking<br />to the bus stop but it was only<br />a <a href="feedingtheraven.html">raven</a>. His croaks sounded nothing<br />like your footsteps (as they pound<br />down the hallway toward my bedroom)<br />his <a href="nothing-is-ever-over.html">wings</a> looked nothing like your<br />legs (running on the wrong side<br />of the road away from my house)<br />I think the one resemblance was the eyes</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">I wanted to tell you something</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I wanted to tell you something in order <a href="poetry-time.html">to</a><br />explain the way I feel about the <a href="initial-conditions.html">Universe</a>,<br />its workings, etc. But I couldn’t <a href="exasperated.html">yesterday</a><br />—I’m sorry—I wanted only to <a href="ouroboros_memory.html">ball</a><br />myself up and cry all day. It was the <a href="sixteenth-chapel.html">sixteenth</a><br />day in a row this happened to me, and to <a href="love-as-god.html">be</a></p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">In bed</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <h2 id="i">I</h2>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Autocento of the breakfast table</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="spittle.html">Ideas are drool.</a> They <a href="building.html">labor to create our buildings out of air</a></p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Initial conditions</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>There is a theory which states the Universe<br />if it began with the same initial conditions<br />( <a href="the-sea_the-beach.html">same gravity</a> same strong weak nuclear force same<br />size and shape ) would unfold in exactly<br />the way it has : with the same planets <a href="big-dipper.html">orbiting suns</a><br />same people making same mistakes : like this morning</p>
@@ -23,14 +23,15 @@
         <h1 class="title">Ipsum lorem</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">a test suite for the gods</h1>
 
+                <!-- dedication -->
+        <div class="dedication">you, dear Reader</div>
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://lipsum.com/"><p>Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.</p></a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Cicero</div>
-                                <!-- dedication -->
-        <div class="dedication">you, dear Reader</div>
-            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="loremipsum.html">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</a>, consectetur adipiscing elit.<br />Vivamus at vulputate ligula, ac ullamcorper magna.<br />In in porta metus.<br />Curabitur iaculis faucibus posuere.<br />Nunc elementum libero vitae sapien auctor mollis.<br />Aenean eget tellus ac urna tincidunt vestibulum.<br />Vivamus eget orci nec purus mollis efficitur.<br />Pellentesque eu pharetra justo.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">January</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>January.<br />It’s cold, and I don’t like it.<br />I prefer warm weather,<br />although I like sweaters. They are the one<br />warm spot in an otherwise <a href="tapestry.html">shitty</a> season.<br />But fall is better sweater weather. So be patient,</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Joke</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He wrote <em><strong>JOKES</strong></em> on the top of a page in his notebook. He had run out of notecards and hadn’t been able to convince his mother to go to the Office Supply Store for him. He left a space underneath it and wrote.</p>
@@ -23,12 +23,13 @@
         <h1 class="title">L’appel du vide</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=yybDMC0TRIwC&amp;pg=PR12&amp;lpg=PR12#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">You can never go home again.</a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Thomas Wolfe</div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <h1 id="i.-walter">I. Walter</h1>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The largest asteroid in the asteroid belt</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>What secrets does it hold?<br />Can it tell us who kissed Sara<br />that night on the veranda, or<br />who Joey is really in love with?<br />We all know it isn’t Sara, we<br />mean look at them Christmas eve<br />and he’s staring whistfully<br />at the stars, or the largest<br />asteroid in the asteroid belt.<br />She’s staring at him, sure, but<br />she sees the twinkle in his eye<br />is not aimed in her direction.<br />The reflection of that reflection<br />will beam into space, lightyears<br />of space, dimming slowly each<br />second, until it dies out like<br />all of Sara’s hopes for something<br />resembling love in this life, real<br />love that takes hold of her by<br />the throat and refuses to let go,<br />love that makes men travel for her<br />and only for her, love that launches<br />space ships to that asteroid, the<br />largest in the asteroid belt, that<br />jewel of dead rock and ice, harboring<br />something that could’ve been life<br /><a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/stevens-snowman.html">and nothing that actually is</a>.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Last bastion</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle<br />down the cold and darkened highways of the heart.<br />They are the last personality left. They are <a href="http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-5.htm">the meek<br />who inherited the heart</a>, what was left of it.<br /> Without food to cook in new or exciting ways<br />nor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefs<br />of the heart quietly waste away while staring<br />doe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windows<br />checking under the dusty produce shelves<br />for something they pray the <a href="in-bed.html">rats</a> haven’t found yet.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Last passenger</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Memory works strangely, <a href="roughgloves.html">spooling its thread</a><br />over the <a href="when-im-sorry.html">nails of events</a> barely related,<br />creating finally some picture, if we’re<br />lucky, of a life—but more likely, it knots<br />itself, catches on a nail or in our throats<br />that gasp, as it binds our necks, for air.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Leaf</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack. He exhaled looking out of the window. He hoped to see a bird fly by, maybe a blue jay or raven. <a href="last-passenger.html">No bird did</a>. He inhaled. He exhaled again in a way that could <a href="last-bastion.html">only be classified</a> as a sigh. He sat down at his writing desk. He began shuffling through what he’d written, trying to find some sort of pattern.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Leg</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>His first chair was a stool. It was an <a href="stump.html">uneven wobbly stool</a> that would not support even forty pounds. “So my first chair is a broken stool” he said after nearly breaking his tailbone on the dirt floor. “Maybe I should start again but this time only with legs.” He began again but this time only with legs. He built <a href="i-think-its-you.html">one leg</a>, which means he cut a straight piece of wood down to four feet in length, whittled the bark off, and sanded it down smooth in what he was now calling his Woodworking Shack. He typed up a note on how to make chair legs.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Liking Things</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>The definition of happiness is <em>doing stuff that you really like</em>. That stuff can be eating soup, going to the bathroom, walking the dog, playing Dungeons and Dragons; whatever keeps your mind off the fact that you’re so goddamn unhappy all the time. That, incidentally, is the definition of like: <em>that feeling you get when you forget how miserable you are for just a little bit</em>. Thus people like doing stuff they like all the time, as often as possible; because if they remember how horrible they really feel at not having a background to put themselves against, they will want to hurt themselves and those around them.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Listen</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>If you swallow hard enough<br />you’ll <a href="serengeti.html">feel the stone</a><br />the one we all have waiting</p>
@@ -23,14 +23,15 @@
         <h1 class="title">Lorem ipsum</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">a test suite for the gods</h1>
 
+                <!-- dedication -->
+        <div class="dedication">you, dear Reader</div>
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://lipsum.com/"><p>Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit.</p></a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Cicero</div>
-                                <!-- dedication -->
-        <div class="dedication">you, dear Reader</div>
-            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><a href="ipsumlorem.html">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</a>, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus at vulputate ligula, ac ullamcorper magna. In in porta metus. Curabitur iaculis faucibus posuere. Nunc elementum libero vitae sapien auctor mollis. Aenean eget tellus ac urna tincidunt vestibulum. Vivamus eget orci nec purus mollis efficitur. Pellentesque eu pharetra justo.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Love as God</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+4%3A8&amp;version=NIV">God is love</a>, they say, but there <a href="i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html">is</a><br />no god. Therefore, how can there be love?<br />And if there is no love, how can there be God?<br />There are things in life, I suppose,<br />that are simply unanswerable mysteries<br />of existence. Maybe this God and love are one.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Love Song</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song. Walking home in the dark after a long day chasing criminals is another. Running away from an imagined evil is no way to begin a story.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Man</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em><a href="http://collection.hht.net.au/firsthhtpictures/fullRecordPicture.jsp?recnoListAttr=recnoList&amp;recno=31230">THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES</a></em></p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The Moon is drowning</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="moongone.html">The moon is drowning</a> the stars it pushes them<br />under into the darkness they cannot breathe<br />they are flailing the moon boasts to my shadow<br />how powerful is the moon how great its light</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The moon is gone and in its place a mirror</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>The moon is gone and in its place a mirror. Looking at the night sky now yields nothing but the viewer’s own face as viewed from a million miles, surrounded by the landscape he is only vaguely aware of being surrounded by. He believes that he is <a href="apollo11.html">alone</a>, surrounded by desert and mountain, but behind him—he now sees it—someone is sneaking up on him. He spins around fast, but no one is there on <a href="serengeti.html">Earth</a>. He looks back up and they are yet closer in the night sky. Again he looks over his shoulder but there is nothing, not even a desert mouse. As he looks up again he realizes it’s a cloud above him, which due to optics has looked like someone else. The cloud blocks out the moon which is now a mirror, and the viewer is completely alone.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The mountain</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>The other side of this mountain<br />is not the mountain. This side<br />is honey-golden, sticky-sweet,<br />full of phone conversations with mother.<br />The other side is a bell,<br />ringing in the church-steeple<br />the day mother died.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Moving Sideways</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk. Thus if you want to be mindful of the movings of the universe sideways, become either drunk or sick. By doing this you remove yourself from the equation, and are able to observe, without being observed, the universe as it dances sideways drunkenly.</p>
@@ -23,8 +23,9 @@
         <h1 class="title"><p>Something about all music being performances of <em>4'33&quot;</em> in places where other bands happen to be playing</p></h1>
         
 
-                        <!-- dedication -->
+                <!-- dedication -->
         <div class="dedication"><a href="https://xkcd.com/1199/">Randall</a></div>
+        
             </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">No nothing</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>While <a href="father.html">swimming in the river</a><br />I saw underneath it a river<br />of stars. Only there was no<br />river: it was noon. You can<br />say <a href="music-433.html">the sun is a river</a>; you<br />can argue the stars back it<br />like <a href="lovessong.html">shirts behind a closet</a><br />door; you can say <a href="big-dipper.html">the earth</a><br />holds us up with its weight<br />or that it means well or it<br />means anything.<br />                There is no<br />closet, <a href="amber-alert.html">nor door</a>; there are<br />no shirts hanging anywhere.<br />There is no false wall that<br />leads deep into the earth’s<br />bowels, <a href="real-writer.html">growing warmer</a> with<br />each step. Warmth as a con-<br />cept has ceased to make any<br />sense. In contraposition to<br />cold, it might, but cold as<br />well <a href="i-think-its-you.html">stepped out</a> last night<br />and hasn’t returned.<br />                     Last I<br />heard, it went out swimming<br />and <a href="in-bed.html">might’ve drowned</a>. Trees<br />were the pallbearers at the<br />funeral, the train was long<br />and wailful, there was much<br /><a href="http://biblehub.com/luke/13-28.htm">wailing and gnashing</a> of all<br />teeth–though there were no<br />teeth, no train, no funeral<br />or prayer or trees at all–<br />nor a <a href="howtoread.html">river underneath</a> any-<br />thing. There was nothing to<br />be underneath anymore.<br />                       Look<br />around, and tell me you see<br />something. Look around, and<br />tell me something that I do<br />not know. I know, more than<br />anything, that the world is<br />always ending. Behind that,<br />there is nothing, save that<br />there is no nothing either.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Notes</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Paul began typing on notecards. Somehow this felt right to his sensibilities. It was difficult to get the little cards into the typewriter. It was a pain to readjust the typewriter for regular paper when he wasn’t writing. He started typing everything on those little notecards: grocery lists, letters to his grandmother, <a href="telemarketer.html">even reports for work</a> (which is what got him in trouble).</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Nothing is ever over</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="no-nothing.html">Nothing is ever over</a>; nothing<br />is ever even begun. The foundation<br />hasn’t been laid; how can we hope<br />to put in the plumbing? The bed<br />is unmade, not even made; the wood<br /><a href="axe.html">hasn’t been cleft from the tree</a>;<br />the seed hasn’t been cast<br />out of water and growth and sun,<br />which itself hasn’t started shining.<br />The cock has never stopped crowing<br />because he never started. Peter<br /><a href="spittle.html">betrays us again</a> and again with<br />silence. Christ wakes up at night,<br /><a href="in-bed.html">choking from a bad dream</a>, wrists<br />aching from a dreamt, torturous pain.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">On formal poetry</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I think that I could write formal poems<br />exclusively, or at least inclusive<br />with all the other stuff I write<br />I guess. Of course, I’ve already written<br />a few, this one included, though “formal”<br />is maybe a stretch. Is blank verse a form?<br />What is form anyway? I picture old<br />women counting <a href="roughgloves.html">stitches on their knitting</a>,<br />keeping iambs next to iambs in lines<br />as straight and sure as arrows. But my sock<br />is lumpy, poorly made: it’s beginning<br />to unravel. Stresses don’t line up. Syl-<br />lables forced to fit like <a href="ronaldmcdonald.html">McNugget</a> molds.<br />That cliché on the arrow? I’m aware.<br />My prepositions too—God, where’s it stop?<br />The answer: never. I will never stop<br />writing poems, or hating what I write.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Options</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>What did he do when he was in the woods? Where did he go? Was there always one spot, one clearing deep within the heart of them, that he would visit? Did he talk to the trees or only to himself? When he chopped down trees, did he leave them there to rot in the quiet or did he drag them out of the woods, behind his Shack, and <a href="weplayedthosegamestoo.html">dismember them</a>? Did he use any for firewood, or did the pieces rot behind his Shack, forgotten? When was the last time he built any furniture? Did he get any better at building it or did he just quit at some point, let the desire to create fall behind him like a forgotten felled tree?</p>
@@ -23,12 +23,13 @@
         <h1 class="title">Ouroboros of Memory</h1>
         
 
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="http://www.bet-tal.com/index.aspx?id=2315"><p>He used his body to remember his body, but in the end could only remember the string.</p></a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">Jonathan Safran Foer</div>
-                            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><a href="joke.html">He said</a> at the beginning, “It’s like rolling yarn into a too-small ball. Sure, you can roll the memories around for a while, and maybe even use some of them. Eventually, though, you’ll wind them all the way out and you’ll be left with nothing but a small loop. You can tie this loop around your finger, and start wrapping your body, but this is an extension of the same problem. You’ll turn into a mummy of memory. There’ll be nothing left underneath but a dead body.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Paul</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <blockquote>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Philosophy</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Importance is important. But meaning is meaningful. Here we are at the crux of the matter, for both meaning and importance are also human-formed. So it would seem that nothing is important or meaningful, if importance and meaning are of themselves only products of the fallible human intellect. But here is the great secret: <em>so is the fallibility of the human intellect a mere product of the fallible human intellect.</em> The question here arises: Is anything real, and not a mere invention of a mistaken human mind? By real of course I mean “that which is <em>on its own terms</em>,” that is, without any <a href="i-am.html">modification</a> on the part of mankind by observing it. But such a thing is impossible to be known, for if it be known it has certainly been observed by someone, and so it is not on its own terms but on the terms of the observer. So it cannot be known if anything exists on its own terms, for it exists on its own terms we certainly will not know anything about it.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Phone</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me” the voice on the phone was a woman’s. He nodded into the receiver. “Hello” Jill asked again “hello?” Paul remembered that phones work by talking and said “Hello Jill.”</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Planks</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <blockquote>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Litany for a plant</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I need a plant. I need a thing<br />to take care of. I need<br />a little green brownspotted<br /><a href="building.html">blackdirt</a> growing<br />quietness. I need a sunlit<br />dawn knowing my name filtered<br />through a <a href="window.html">thin green window</a>.<br />I need chlorophyll<br />working its <a href="cereal.html">magic</a> on beams of<br />grassmade early morning dewdrop<br />sweetmaking green. I need<br />the dark earth sucking water<br />from a black crevice<br />its black magic churning<br />wormilled rockturned starblind<br />darkness and cold into<br /><a href="https://samofthetenthousandthings.wordpress.com/2012/09/08/charles-wright-reads-james-wright-the-journey-audio-poem/">the opposite of dust</a>. I need the heat<br />to blind me. I need the dumb making<br />to charge my coldened blood. I need<br />the dropturned leaves to turn again<br />their <a href="no-nothing.html">faces to the windblown sun</a>.<br />I need millions of tiny years<br />summed up and burning out some unknown<br />new growth into the air. I need four<br />hundred feet of dark red gnarled wood<br />and needles glistening wetly on goldheaded<br />branches hoisting themselves<br />to the sky. I need ten strong men<br />to fail to bring you down. Old one<br />I need the peace that comes with knowing<br />something sacred holds still<br />in the world. I need your green tongues<br /><a href="fire.html">of flame to lick at old wounds</a><br />stitching us together away from ourselves.<br />I need your brownbranching grasp<br />to keep me from drifting off<br />into <a href="in-bed.html">unknowing terrible sleep</a>. I need<br /><a href="ouroboros_memory.html">to know the snake</a> hanging<br />from your branches. I need to watch<br />the dropping of flesh massful<br />onto the ground from a height. I need<br />the gnawer at your root to strike<br />a vein to quicken old brown stone<br />to movement. I need jeweleyed venom<br />barking new greennesses into the bark.<br />I need a knocker of dark secrets hidden<br />in the dark bark hiding a smallstone<br />smoldering pearl in the knot. I need<br />that <a href="roughgloves.html">pearl held out in a hand</a> like an offering.<br />I need the hand to be a plant’s hand.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Something about the nature of poetry and time</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I’m writing this now because I have to.<br />Not in some “my soul yearns for this and<br />I can’t help it” way, but in the way that this<br />moment is structured as such, that it is<br />crystallized this way, me writing this, and later<br />you reading it, now for you, later for me,</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Prelude</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Of course, <a href="boar.html">there is a God</a>. Of course, <a href="TODO_BONNIE_PRINCE_BILLIE_YOUTUBE">there is no God</a>. Of course, what’s really <a href="building.html">important</a> is that these aren’t important. No, they are; but not really important. All that’s important is the relative importance of non-important things. <a href="january.html">Shit.</a> Never mind; let’s start over.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Problems</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy. No matter how hard or easy we try, it is not to be. It seems sometimes that, just as the dog was made for jumping in mud and sniffing out foxholes and having a good time all around, man was made for sadness, loneliness and heartache.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Proverbs</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><a href="words-meaning.html">Nothing matters; everything is sacred. Everything matters; nothing is sacred</a>.<a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"><sup>1</sup></a> This is the only way we can move forward: by moving sideways. Life is a great big rugby game, and the entire field has to be run for a goal. The fact that the beginning two verses of this chapter have the same number of characters proves that they are a tautological pair, that is, they <em>complete each other</em>. Sometimes life seems like a dog wagging its tail, smiling up at you and wanting you to love it, just wanting that, simple simple love, oblivious to the fact that it just ran through your immaculately groomed flower garden and tracked all the mud in onto your freshly steamed carpet. Life is not life in a suburb. <a href="lovesong.html">There are no rosebushes, groomed never. There is no carpet, steamed at any time.</a> The dog looks at you wanting you to love it. It wants to know that you know that it’s there. <em>It wants to be observed</em>.<a href="#fn2" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref2"><sup>2</sup></a></p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Punch</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party. <em><strong>WELCOME BACK PAUL!</strong></em> was written on a big banner across the back wall. Someone had ordered a confectioner’s-sugar cake with <a href="big-dipper.html">frosting flowers</a> on the corners. It said the same thing as the banner. “Welcome back, Paul” said Jill as he was at the punch bowl. The cup was on the table as he ladled punch in with his right hand. His left was wrapped in <a href="100-lines.html">gauze</a>.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The purpose of dogs</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Okay, so as we said in <a href="prelude.html">the Prelude</a>, there either is or isn’t a God. This has been one of the main past times of humanity, ever since … since the first man (or woman) climbed out of whatever slime or swamp he thumbed his way out of. What humanity has failed to realize is that an incredibly plausible third, and heretofore unknown, hypothesis also exists: There is a dog.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Question</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything” Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work. It was in the city and his mother told him she wouldn’t drive him so he’d had to take the bus. Number 3 he thought it was. <a href="riptide_memory.html">He couldn’t quite remember.</a> Jill said “Sorry what?” Paul realized that she hadn’t really noticed him there in the break room as he was hunched behind the refrigerator a little and she was busy pouring coffee and exactly two tablespoons of both milk and sugar into her mug before she put the coffee in. He decided to repeat the question.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">A real writer</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Sometimes I feel as though I am not a real writer.<br /><a href="cereal.html">I don’t smoke</a>. I don’t wake up early but I don’t sleep<br />all day either. I find myself increasingly interested<br />in dumb luck. Chance: I’ve found two dimes in as many<br />days. Does this mean I’ve found twenty lucky pennies?<br />I want you to participate. You the reader. You,<br />the probabilistic god of my dreams. I’ve been having<br /><a href="in-bed.html">strange dreams</a> lately. I don’t remember them but<br />they leave impressions. A bare foot. A tunnel<br />of hair from her face to mine. A boat stranded<br />in a living-room. Something warm. Something like the sun<br />through my eyelids. <a href="roughgloves.html">A hand, with all its dead symbology</a>.<br /><a href="no-nothing.html">My teeth have fallen out</a>. No, you pulled them out<br />with your hands, threw them over your left shoulder<br /><a href="i-am.html">like salt</a>, to wish away bad luck. I have something<br />to tell you: bad luck follows like a dog. It lets you<br />get ahead for a few days, a week, a year. You’ll see,<br />it’ll bite your sleeping face when you’re not looking.<br />I’ve been dreaming about the future, I know. In my dream<br />I am not a writer, <a href="riptide_memory.html">I live in a place with rain</a>. You<br />are sunning yourself as you read this, on a beach or<br />maybe a desert. Let me move in with you. I can cook<br /><a href="when-im-sorry-i.html">or clean</a> or take care of your dog while you’re out.<br />I’ll never have to write again. <a href="about-the-author.html">I’ll watch television</a>.<br />Do I want to become a writer? Tell me. Should I smoke?<br />I can sleep all day in your attic if you want, become<br /><a href="love-as-god.html">your god</a>, lose my own, settle to the bottom of the bed<br />like a boat in a river, dream about nothing but <a href="leaf.html">furniture</a>.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Reports</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“Paul, you can’t turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards” Jill told him after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six notecards. He had spent the weekend</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Riptide of memory</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.<br />The air up here is thin, but the wind blows harder<br />than anywhere else I know. It threatens to rip<br />my body away, like <a href="angeltoabraham.html">an angel of death</a>, to the stars.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Ronald McDonald</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>When Ronald McDonald takes off his <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">striped shirt</a>,<br />his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer looks<br />like anyone or anything special, sitting next to women</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Rough gloves</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I lost my hands &amp; knit replacement ones<br />from <a href="poetry-time.html">spiders’ threads</a>, stronger than steel but soft<br />as lambs’ wool. Catching as they do on nails<br />&amp; your collarbone, you don’t seem to like<br />their rough warm presence on your <a href="feedingtheraven.html">cheek or thigh</a>.<br />I’ve asked you if you minded, you’ve said no<br />(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread<br />so stale it could <a href="weplayedthosegamestoo.html">break a hand</a>). Remember<br />your senile mother’s face above that table?<br />I’d say she got the meaning of that look.<br />You’d rather not be touched by these rough gloves,<br />the only way I have to knit a love<br />against whatever winters we may enter<br />like a silkworm in a spider’s blackened <a href="serengeti.html">maw</a>.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Sapling</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch. From first chop to fall it had taken him eight minutes and something like twenty seconds. Maybe a little change. He leaned against another tree and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. He lifted it out of its box and fished in his other pocket for his lighter, failing to find it. He searched his other pockets. He came to the realization that he had forgotten it in his Shack (in confusion over his True Vocation, he’d resorted to calling it simply the Shack until he could figure it out). He sighed and put his hands in his pockets.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Seasonal affective disorder</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>On your desk I set a tangerine:<br />a relic of a <a href="january.html">winter</a> quickly passing.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Sense of it</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I only write poems on <a href="stagnant.html">the bus</a> anymore.<br />I sit far in the back to be alone.<br />I mark black things on white things in a black thing.<br />I try to make sense of it.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Serengeti</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>The self is a serengeti<br />a wide grassland with baobab trees<br />reaching their roots deep into earth<br />like a child into a clay pot<br />A wind blows there or seems to blow<br />if he holds it up to his ear the air shifts<br />like stones in a stream uncovering a crawfish<br />it finds another hiding place watching you<br />Its eyes are blacker than wind<br />on the serengeti they are the <a href="onformalpoetry.html">eyes of a predator</a><br />they are coming toward you or receding<br />a storm cloud builds on the horizon<br />Are you <a href="squirrel.html">running</a> toward the rain or away from it<br />Do you stand still and crouch hoping for silence</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Shed</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“What do you do all day in that shed out back” his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV. “Write” he answered. “Write what” she asked in that way that means he’d better not say I don’t know. “I don’t know” he said.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The shipwright</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>He builds a ship as if it were the last thing<br />holding him together, as if, when he stops,<br />his body will fall onto the plate-glass water<br />and shatter into sand. To keep his morale up<br />he whistles and sings, but the wind whistles <a href="apollo11.html">louder</a><br />and taunts him: Your ship will build itself<br />if you throw yourself into the sea; time<br />has a way of growing your beard for you.<br />Soon, you’ll find yourself on a rocking chair<br />on some porch made from your ship’s timbers.<br />The window behind you is made from a sail, thick<br />canvas, and no one inside will hear your calling<br />for milk or a chamberpot. Your children<br />will have all sailed to the New World and left you.<br />But he tries not to listen, continues to hammer<br />nail after nail into timber after timber,<br />but the wind <a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">finally blows</a> him into the growling ocean<br />and the ship falls apart on its own.</p>
@@ -23,14 +23,15 @@
         <h1 class="title">The Sixteenth Chapel</h1>
         
 
+                <!-- dedication -->
+        <div class="dedication">Max</div>
+        
                 <!-- epigraph -->
         <div class="epigraph">
                         <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_pwLyeoqk">Canadian High School!</a>
                     </div>
                 <div class="epigraph-attrib">David Letterman</div>
-                                <!-- dedication -->
-        <div class="dedication">Max</div>
-            </header>
+                    </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>If Justin Bieber isn’t going for the sixteenth<br />chapel, I’m not either. I admit he is my role<br />model. He’s so current, so fresh and so new,<br />and Michelangelo is so old, his art so dated.<br />Where is the love in those old paintings? All<br />I see is <a href="creation-myth.html">creation</a>, <a href="movingsideways.html">judgment</a>, and <a href="deathstrumpet.html">death</a>—</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Snow</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em><a href="fire.html">I don’t care if they burn</a></em> he wrote on his last blank notecard. He’d have to go to the Office Supply Store tomorrow after work.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Let’s start with something simple</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>in mammals the ratio between bladder size<br />and urethra is such that it takes<br />all of them the same time to piss. Take<br />for example the fact that Fibonnacci<br />numbers show up everywhere. How can you<br />look at this at all of this all of<br />these facts and tell me to my face there<br />is no God? And yet there isn’t<br />you murmer quietly into my ear over<br />and over like a low tide sounding<br />its lonely waves on an abandoned beach.<br />The ocean that birthed us holds us<br />still. We are tied, you and I, together<br />in her arms. The <a href="moon-drowning.html">moon, caring father,</a><br />looks down from a dispassionate sky.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Spittle</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought.<br />When you turn away from me, my thought is broken<br />and forms anew with something else. Ideas are drool.<br />Beauty has been slobbered over far too long. <a href="howithappened.html">God</a><br />is a tidal wave of bodily fluid. Even the flea has some<br />vestigial wetness. We live in a world fleshy and dark,<br />and moist as a nostril. Is conciousness only a watery-eyed<br />romantic, crying softly into his <a href="lovesong.html">shirt-sleeve</a>? Is not reason<br />a square-jawed businessman with a briefcase full of memory?<br />I want to kiss the world to make it mine. I want to become<br />a Judas to reality, betray it with the wetness of emotion.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The squirrel</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>He is so full in himself:<br />how far down the branch to run,<br />how long to jump, when to grab the air<br />and catch in it and turn, and land on branch<br />so gracefully it’s like dying, alone<br />and warm in a bed next to a summer window<br />and the <a href="mountain.html">birds singing</a>. And on that branch there<br />is the squirrel dancing among the branches<br />and you think <em>What if he fell?</em> but he won’t<br />because he’s a squirrel and that’s what<br />they do, <a href="movingsideways.html">dance</a> and never fall. It was erased<br />long ago from the squirrel, even<br />the possibility of falling was erased<br />from his being by the slow inexorable evolution<br />of squirrels, that is why all squirrels<br />are so full in themselves, full in who they are.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Stagnant</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read” Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work. His thoughts couldn’t become real to him because he didn’t want to look insane to everyone else on the bus. His thoughts came to him like someone <a href="sense-of-it.html">yelling over a hard wind</a>. He was trying to write them on his memory but the act of writing was easier and more immediate than that of listening. He was afraid that when he looked at his memory later he wouldn’t be able to read what was written.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Statements</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">a fragment</h1>
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <h2 id="i.-eli" class="unnumbered">I. Eli</h2>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Stayed on the bus too long</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>It was a <a href="hard-game.html">gamble</a><br />I lost—thought I could get closer<br />than the library, stayed<br />on past the admin building,<br />back down the hill to my beginning,<br />the driver’s second-to-last stop.<br /><a href="lappel-du-vide.html">I have to walk now</a>,<br />through the wind and sun, past<br /><a href="theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html">traffic</a> moving merrily along<br />taking their own gambles<br />staying on or getting off<br />too soon.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Stump</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He walked into the woods for the first time in months. It was a bright summer day but under the canopy of leaves it was cool and quiet and twilight. <a href="music-433.html">There was no sound but his footsteps, his breathing.</a> Instead of an axe, his right hand clutched his notebook. His left was in his pocket. A pencil perched behind his ear.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Swansong</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">alternate version</h1>
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>This poem is dry like <a href="time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html">chapped lips</a>.<br /><a href="no-nothing.html">It is hard as teeth</a>—hear the tapping?<br />It is the swan song of beauty, as all<br />swan songs are. <a href="poetry-time.html">Reading</a> it, you are<br />puzzled, perhaps a little repulsed.<br />Swans do not have teeth, nor do they sing.<br />A honking over the cliff is all<br />they can do, and that they do<br />badly. You don’t know where I’m going.<br />You want to tell me, <a href="about-the-author.html">You are not you</a>.<br /><a href="swansong.html">You are the air the swan walks on.</a><br />You are the fringe of the curtain<br /><a href="elegyforanalternateself.html">that separates me from you</a>. I say<br />that you are no longer the temple,<br />that you have been through <a href="fire.html">fire</a><br />and are now less than ash. You are<br />the subtraction of yourself from<br />the world, <a href="finding-the-lion.html">the air without a swan</a>.<br />Together, we are each other. You<br />and I have both nothing and everything<br />at once, we own the world and nothing in it.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Swan song</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Swans fly overhead singing goodbye<br />to we <a href="howithappened.html">walkers of the earth</a>. You point<br />to them in formation, you tell me<br />you are not you. <a href="swansong-alt.html">You are the air the swans<br />walk on</a> as they journey like pilgrims<br />to a temple in the south. A curtain<br />there separates me from you, swans<br />from the air they fly through. I say<br />that you are no longer the temple,<br />that you have been through fire<br />and are now less than ash. You are<br />a <a href="moongone.html">mirror</a> of me, the <a href="deathstrumpet.html">air without a swan</a>.<br />Together, we are each other. You<br />and I have both nothing and everything<br />at once. We own the world and nothing in it.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Swear</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <blockquote>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Table of contents</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <table>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Tapestry</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em>Apparently typewriters need ribbon. Apparently ribbon is incredibly hard to find anymore because no one uses typewriters. Apparently I am writing my hymns from now on.</em> So he was back to calling his notes “hymns.” He looked up “hymns” in the dictionary. It said that a hymn was “an ode or song of praise or adoration.” Praise or adoration to what? he asked himself. He thought maybe furniture. There was still a lot of notfurniture in what he was again calling his Writing Shack.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">Telemarketer</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical. He never had, of course, having heard when he first arrived in the city that only tourists unaccustomed to tall buildings did so. He’d never thought about it until he’d heard the social injunction against such a thing; it was now one of the things he thought about almost every day as he rode to and from work in gritty blue buses.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The night we met, I was out of my mind</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">or Lying in the dark</h1>
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>My head is <a href="found-typewriter-poem.html">full of fire</a>, my tongue swollen,<br />pregnant with all the things I should’ve said<br />but didn’t. Last night, we met each other<br />in the dark, remember? You told me time was</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The sea and the beach</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Waiting for a reading to start<br />when there’s nobody coming anyway<br />is like waiting <a href="cold-wind.html">for the tide</a><br />to make some meaning of the beach.</p>
@@ -23,7 +23,8 @@
         <h1 class="title">The ocean overflows with camels</h1>
         
 
-                    </header>
+        
+            </header>
 
     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>We found your <a href="lovesong.html">shirt</a> deep in the dark water,<br />caught on the clothesline of sleeping pills.<br />Your head on the shore was streaming tears<br />like sleeves or the coronas of saints saved<br />from fire. The burning bush began crying<br />like a child who misses his mother. Traffic<br />slammed shut like an eye. God’s mean <a href="roughgloves.html">left hook</a><br />knocked us out, and we began swimming.<br />Bruises bloomed like algae on a lake.<br />Your <a href="angeltoabraham.html">father</a> beat your chest and screamed<br />for someone to open a window. The air<br />stopped breathing. Fish clogged its gills.<br />Birds sang too loudly, trying to drown out<br />your father’s cries, but all their sweetness<br />was not enough. No polite noises will be made<br />anymore, he told us, clawing your breastbone.<br />He opened your heart to air again. Camels<br />flowed from you both like water from the rock.<br />God spoke up, but nobody listened to him.<br />We hung you up on the line to dry.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Time looks up to the sky</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I wish I’d kissed you when I had the chance.<br />Your face hovering there, so near to mine,<br />your mouth pursed—what word was it you pronounced?</p>
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         <h1 class="title">To Daniel</h1>
         <h1 class="subtitle">an elaboration of a previous comment</h1>
 
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     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>There are more modern ideals of beauty<br />than yours, young padowan. Jessica has<br />some assets, that I’ll give you easily,<br />but in my women I prefer pizzazz.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Toilet</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>Paul only did his reading on the toilet.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Toothpaste</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He couldn’t <a href="no-nothing.html">find a shirt</a> to go to work in. They all had stains on them somewhere. He pulled out a vest to put on over the stains but somehow all of them were still visible. Most of them were unidentifiable but one he thought could have come from <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html">that peach</a> he ate two weeks before. Another looked like toothpaste but he was paranoid it was something else.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Treatise</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <blockquote>
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         <h1 class="title">Underwear</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around. “What” he called upstairs, pretending not to hear his mother’s <a href="exasperated.html">question</a> over the noise of the dryer. He had heard her ask “Could you bring up my underwear from the dryer” but didn’t want to touch her underwear any more than he had to. “I don’t want to bring up your underwear” he said to himself, and walked back upstairs as his mother was calling down again for her underwear.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Wallpaper</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He didn’t go back into the shed for a long time. His hatchet was in there, and his axe. He didn’t want to face them. His papers, he decided, could wait in the top drawer for a while before being looked at again. The pain medication made him loopy. He couldn’t think as well as he was used to, which wasn’t well to begin with. Even saying his thoughts out loud, it was as though they were on the <a href="statements-frag.html">TV in the next room</a>. Someone was cheering. They had just won a car.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">We played those games too</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game<br />blowing on each other’s’ vocal chords to make music<br />on the tundra. I thought about how<br />once we played the same game<br />and the sounds blowing over the chords of our throats<br />was the same as a wind over frozen prairie.<br />We are the Eskimo girls who played<br />the game that night to keep ourselves warm.<br />I run my hands over <a href="and.html">my daughter</a>’s<br />voicebox as she hums a song<br />about a seal and about killing the seal and about<br />skinning it and rendering the blubber<br />into clear oil to light lamps.<br />I remember you are my lamp. She remembers<br />you although you left before she arrived.<br />I can never tell her about you.<br />I will never be able to express that taste of your oil<br />as we <a href="spittle.html">pushed our throats together</a>.<br />I will never be able to say how<br />we share this blemish like conjoined twins.<br />I will fail you always to remember you.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">When I’m sorry I wash dishes</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing verse">
     <p>Your casserole dish takes the longest:<br />it has some baked-in crust from when you<br />cooked chicken last night. Washing it<br />allows me to think about this poem’s title<br />and the first few lines. Now that I’ve<br />written them down, I’ve <a href="elegyforanalternateself.html">forgotten the rest</a>.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Window</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p><em><strong><a href="hymnal.html">HYMN 386: JOKES</a></strong></em></p>
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         <h1 class="title">Words and meaning</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, / and frightening that it does not quite,” Jack Gilbert opens his poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart.” In a similar vein, Hass’s “Meditation at Legunitas” states, “A word is elegy to what it signifies.” These poems get to the heart of language, and express the old duality of thought: by giving a word to an entity, it is both tethered and made meaningful.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Worse looking over</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing verse">
     <p><a href="moon-drowning.html">The radio is screaming the man</a><br />on the radio will not be quiet he is<br />pushed far into the background<br />while some NPR talkers murmur over<br />his screaming he lost something<br />very important. He says it over<br />and over but they do not listen<br />they think of their children at home<br />lying <a href="in-bed.html">in bed</a> dreaming sweet<br />childhood one of them is staying over<br />at a friend’s house they are staying<br />up late they never want it to be over<br />not like the man. His life on the radio<br />will be the only one he ever has<br />his life it is wasted he’s being spoken over<br />such pain is in his voice. I wish you<br />could hear it. <a href="nothing-is-ever-over.html">It’s something never over</a>.<br />Suffering everywhere always and over it<br />the same serene murmur of the comfortable<br />distracted or worse looking over<br />the <a href="last-passenger.html">shoulder</a> and quietly looking away.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Writing</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping. He remembered how to fill it from <em><a href="http://www.elkonigsburg.com/">The View from Saturday</a></em>, which he’d read as a kid. It had been one of his favorite books. He remembered the <a href="swansong-alt.html">heart</a> puzzle they completed, the origin of the word “posh,” and most of all his fourth-grade teacher <a href="telemarketer.html">Ms. (Mrs? He could never remember)</a> Samovar. He smiled as he opened the lid on the ink well he’d just bought.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">X-ray</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he’d never heard before cried out. He jerked his head up and to the right as the hatchet fell down and to the left. It cut deep into the back of his left hand. A low thud didn’t echo in the forest because all the needles and snow absorbed <del>sound well</del> the sound.</p>
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         <h1 class="title">Yellow</h1>
         
 
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     <section class="thing prose">
     <p>He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white <a href="feedingtheraven.html">refrigerator</a>, a black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar, and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall. He’d remember that somewhere he’d read an article about yellow walls being calming. “They use yellow in asylums” he’d say to himself.</p>