I step back so I can circle the object,
see it from behind, from below.
The object in question here a sentiment
voiced amid chirps and squeals at a kiddie
birthday party, held, aptly, at a gymnasium.
Said tenderly, it stung, redolent
of childlessness. Obstacle course,
tug of war the afternoon’s
cathartic activity, alternating
teams: kids vs. kids / moms vs. kids
dads vs. kids / moms vs. dads
I join anyway. I’ll role-play,
clown around, reproduce
authority’s pronouncements:
¡En esta casa debe haber ORDEN Y SILENCIO!
*
“It’s been and gone.” This group convenes at Off Paradise to talk
about the objects in the room in connection to “Metaphysics,”
a poem by Wisława Szymborska. The idea of putting something
else in relation to what’s already in the room comes up.
Someone points to the floorboards’ grooves left by light
machinery, then to that which could appear as equally subtle
artistic intervention: the exposed pipes in the room, escaping
our attention like relative pronouns, unless something’s off.
They speak, I jot bits down, but I can’t retrace the circuitry
of my thoughts then. “In the same irreversible order.”
If, out of the blue, I started speaking a poem, I offer,
they’d have to reckon with its flitting presence, the way
you acknowledge the objects you walk around to avoid
bumping into them, especially if misplaced, or how you
almost didn’t notice your tuning out the round rust-chested
American robin’s bright, gurgling announcement of spring
which, like all birdsong, is untranscribable and the sole reason
why birds elude literary authorities. Others keep circling back
to the first question, to OOO, fixating on the dynamic between
text and the sleepwalkers: nonfunctional objects that
aspire to transcend their physical properties while withdrawing
into themselves at the same time. How different sculpture
from picture, from window or poem, from third object or prop.
A general ooh is heard when someone speaks of “vibratory weirdness.”
