COLLABORATION

The Space Between, collaboration, Denise Bergman and artist Phyllis Ewen.

IS IS WAS
One language disappears from the world every two weeks


Clawed consonants in rubble.
The h or s before and, the weighted n, the d
lost in the tumble too

and of course the vowels.
What if instead the stranded alphabet was pulled back in—
the circle is elastic,
sometimes we find our way home.

Twice a month a language is sentenced, a string of words
hangs, drops, disappears.
Meaning explodes.
Metaphor collapses or shatters.
Fine-tuned articulation

snaps. Shreds of subtlety—
the spoken

no longer lived, the lived no longer spoken.
Chips and burrs of intonation,
slivers of inflection, shiftless dunes.

If a woman comes looking for her history tell her it is lost.
Tell her the phonemes are sand.

Published in Denver Quarterly

HAPPENING UPON THE EXPLODING SAND SCULPTURE COMPETITION ON TV


Found: the proper distance
Handprints the wind wiped away
Small cone piles where a bird claw raked the tension loose
Like crumbs

From a swath of sand, preimagined
History's sputter, or granules of myth, rough in places
Rough
And detailed

Color of tawn and if it rains, leather
Color of itself core to surface
Color of reuse
A seablue horizon floats its way up

Cyclops, Einstein, Planet of the Apes, Indiana Jones
The lone woman Betsy Ross sews Gallileo's stars
Map of narrative
Chunks, clumps, wads, pieces, specks

Eons of drafts of sand / earth of sand / sky of sand
Deeded sand
Air / sand
A smithereen lands at my feet

Stand back when the shoulder rounds
The corner rounds
Too close if what you saw before / you saw
Meant anything




Published in Monthly Review