Say this sign’s
shorting out,
a string of sparks,
hot
illuminated falling.
Did I hang it there?
*
It was the texture
& experience of anyone
smoldering over the forge / forgery / creationfog
hovering / a cursor / casting
weird / trochaic / tetrameter-wise
done & / done & / not un / undone
redemptive as a billboard.
*
Forward motion—
that’s me!
Everything moves
<e.g., the blogosphere>
until the lights come on—
you missed it!
There are users / downloaders
pain-bodies
wanting to be seen
in repetition / rituals of violence
when I am the sunny sleeping
American girl
watched
by watchers of pain-bodies.
*
Monitor on.
Now I’m the naked woman
obscured by ice cream,
vanilla interloper
monitoring sensation:
cement wedding cake
lit <desired> from within / eaten down to rebar
monologing to collective thought / crowd
cheering a stage:
End of Days!
*
The way they counted
then went to seed?
Or eminent domain
either side of impermanence
finding an organizing passion
believing I still prefer
love / foraging the ready fridge
mockingbird
sick of the mock / the tune
unspooling
at the pulled dollstring / dolly-soul
leaking iron & pee,
spark catching in wheel wells
light passing
out of range?
*
Time’s finishing
the life on this plate again
time makes a deliberate
strategy of / moving forward
into live editing of / marrying
the forgery of forward—
*
so it appears
I’m continuum with antennae
wireless sandwich print receipt again
for red vase found in recycling & chandelier
etched by finger on the frost
I’m a site human resourced to
refake / reword / process
ephemeral installation
cranking out identifying finites
up they’ll burn
Janet Kaplan is the author most recently of Dreamlife of a Philanthropist:
Prose Poems & Prose Sonnets, winner of the 2011 Ernest Sandeen Prize
from the University of Notre Dame Press. She publishes the fine-art chapbook
press Red Glass Books and teaches in the creative writing program at Hofstra University.
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