Sixteen Million Lines in Search of a Horizon
Accompanied by the Unsolicited but Sharp Elbows Manuscript 'Thread Count'
Series created for Spotlight Six
Arsenal Center for the Arts Watertown, MA. Winter, 2013 Copyright Rachel Hammerman all rights reserved
Arsenal Center for the Arts Watertown, MA. Winter, 2013 Copyright Rachel Hammerman all rights reserved
Thread Count
Weave me in scenes so delicate
In tight seams so seamlessly intricate
They seem to be stitched with high wire.
Solder shut the rip in a split pair of pants
Twine loose frays of unraveling rants
With staples
Punch click over cracks in the sidewalk pavement
Stamp each step an engravement, etching the words:
Almost, on the heal of my right shoe
and
Nearly, on the sole of my left.
And on the cement:
Just a shadow cast by the friction unfelt but looming so blatantly and earnestly overhead that it is felt.
Make black holes melt inside the swollen pulse of possibility.
Drop the plumb line’s rope through belt loops left empty
Tempt me with a proximity that lags but clings.
Wrap a circling leering ring around that piercing puckish sting
That could be but not quite sort of fling thing is bound
But delicate.
Tip toe then tap out elegance
Play tug of war against relevance
Malevolence is a sport!
Laugh, but never smile
Appease, and don’t disagree that between this asphalt and me
Are faults as deep as canyons dug
By lakes of theorized strings.
Where sand dune mattresses lie
Like open graves
To tidal waves
Surging through sprawls of dried up impulse.
Where oceans poised on diving boards plunge
Like belly floppers
Slapping waters
Along long battlefields of sand.
Then stand beneath a blanket of glass
Cast a net made entirely of gas
And suspend me in scenes so delicate
In tight seams so seamlessly intricate
They seem to be stitched with high wire.
Weave me in scenes so delicate
In tight seams so seamlessly intricate
They seem to be stitched with high wire.
Solder shut the rip in a split pair of pants
Twine loose frays of unraveling rants
With staples
Punch click over cracks in the sidewalk pavement
Stamp each step an engravement, etching the words:
Almost, on the heal of my right shoe
and
Nearly, on the sole of my left.
And on the cement:
Just a shadow cast by the friction unfelt but looming so blatantly and earnestly overhead that it is felt.
Make black holes melt inside the swollen pulse of possibility.
Drop the plumb line’s rope through belt loops left empty
Tempt me with a proximity that lags but clings.
Wrap a circling leering ring around that piercing puckish sting
That could be but not quite sort of fling thing is bound
But delicate.
Tip toe then tap out elegance
Play tug of war against relevance
Malevolence is a sport!
Laugh, but never smile
Appease, and don’t disagree that between this asphalt and me
Are faults as deep as canyons dug
By lakes of theorized strings.
Where sand dune mattresses lie
Like open graves
To tidal waves
Surging through sprawls of dried up impulse.
Where oceans poised on diving boards plunge
Like belly floppers
Slapping waters
Along long battlefields of sand.
Then stand beneath a blanket of glass
Cast a net made entirely of gas
And suspend me in scenes so delicate
In tight seams so seamlessly intricate
They seem to be stitched with high wire.
