Ron Silliman – Sentence That Each Time You Read It C

Ron Silliman

Sentence That Each Time You Read It Changes

From VOG Dream in which I dream in which I dream I wake in a forest in a gale clouds barely visible above the struggling clattering branches blotting out the sky birds not visible not audible where do they go before the start of rain so humid we can barely walk through these vast but wild gardens before we wake again · The busboy’s cologne is thick as he reaches across the table, jasmine in the Earl Gray suddenly clouded, the sound of ice as it tumbles from the pitcher into glass. Ibis or ibex, which one? Gold fish strangle in tap water. The tab of your shirt peeking up over the collar’s edge. Pawnshop saxophone window display. “Internal mosh pit,” writes Drew Gardner. Sarcophogal hernia. Tennis sea. · Lower Manhattan sunset as a quality of light without glare, deepening these shades of brick Inside of the bodega crowded, cluttered gradually becoming visible out on the street Your smile as you lean into me in that low cut gown, wanting me to look This week it’s El Duque but it could be anything just so long as we stay distracted In dream San Francisco stretched outward from the true spine Divisadero Out toward a never to be arrived at sea – always it’s twilight and this search feels twisted Never understanding precisely the object pause instead before the unlit storefront To catch your reflection uncertain at first which one is you, accusatory pronoun · L-shaped room. The sound of birds before light first become apparent, pale horizon, within the oak forest. Last night’s orgasm a pleasant tug at the muscles of the groin. Able to discern the dove’s call amid the chatter of the finches. The colorblind boy unable to find the rainbow against the pale gray sky. Picking April’s newspaper from the lawn in September. Sentences in search of a poem. Jurassic perk. The light barely shimmers off the still pool in the saliva bed, the smallest sense of motion beneath the thick mass of tongue overhead, long shadows cast by the wrecked enamel wall at lip’s edge, a dike, a wedge of burnt chicken poised on the tines of a fork held there, as if unable to come closer. Dweezle’s easel. The Pew, the proud. Rhythm of a young boy descending the stairs, midway between running and tumbling, footfalls in my bedroom in my grandparents’ house – it’s night but my mother calls to me to come into the hall – I can glimpse my grandfather through the open door to his bedroom, which means he’s still alive and this is a long time ago. Dialog box. Scheme for reducing decoherence in quantum memory. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of fireflies amid the tall white oaks, the dusk turning gray again. Gently, my fingers part the lips, pink within pink, until you start moving. Twirling the paper cone about the rim of the large cotton candy machine bowl, while above the tall oaks in the shimmering heat of the summer sky, a handful of balloons, still tied together, becomes smaller and smaller, every color of the rainbow. What did you write today? After the thunderstorm, the temperature drops ten degrees, the humidity sucked from the air. The weight room almost empty on a Friday night. Dry lightning illumines the forests, between flashes of which all that lingers in the suddenly deeper dark is the twinkling of the June bugs. · You with your back up against pillow-cushioned wall, naked (the room bathed in afternoon light), legs raised high the deeper I might enter It is the third time we make love that day · Image of you standing over me arms crossed, pulling the shirt up over your head then stepping one leg at a time from your trousers the night before · It panics you to be hugged in an enclosed place, an embrace in the closet while dressing (I learn this more slowly) · In the morning the neighbors washing their car too noisily just inches from the bedroom window, our attempt at orgasms in silence · Muscle under the right shoulder blade where you store all your tension · Cum drips from your lips back onto my stomach · Thickest, richest head of deep black hair aflame now with silver · The official smile vs. the spontaneous grin · Baby toe of the right foot hard-edged with these years · Rubbing the balls of your feet you claim makes your scalp tingle · Hilltop window high over the wide valley through which only helicopter pilots could watch · You relax as I oil and kiss these lips nibbling, nuzzling the inner thigh softest flesh of all · In your sleep at times I hear the incessant grinding of your teeth · “It’s okay,” you say, “you can come anytime you want” · Towers of Duplos cover the rug. Cushions understood as objects of war. The TV we never use. Poodle, poodle, pumpkinoodle. A collection of Foxtrot left open on the floor, Post-its marking the “good ones.” Actress employed to portray a mental patient in the music video years later has become famous in her own right. The gymnasium of lies offers too much light, too many mirrors. These two back teeth, between which, whenever I floss, the most foul odor erupts. This fresh t-shirt, pulled over my head, with a slightly different cut to its collar, clings as if to choke me. A faint but industrial tone to the air conditioning. In the dream, my lip is swollen, disfigured – but when I wake, it’s fine, the flesh smooth, nothing puffy, and when I start to write I remember an earlier piece of writing, referring there to my lip as it really was swollen, 1966. The distance the chocolate bar falls in the vending machine, once it has been chosen, cracks the chocolate right by the lone almond. Ad banners across dreamscapes – what would they give to achieve that? Never flowchart level two.