Breakfast by Barbara Beck

After JKD's Sleeplessness, fragment by sean s,
First by Michelle Naka Pierce, Twelve first lines by Rufo Q.

how cracked and empty
porcelain the bowl
is what makes beginnings
a naked receptacle
I have not done not tended

say down in the belly's
home body heaven
is squeezed orange versus
a condensation of space
I once saw from the window

border bird crossing
a clear sky curve
the result of have-to
its own hypothesis
reward as if

A First Hypothesis by Jonathan Wonham

after Fragment 3 by Sean S and First by Michelle Naka Pierce.

Even so, it was a first hypothesis. Who said
the result was a loss? Was knowing
impossible once? The possible came
with its loss. The creek became a flood
against the panes of glass and snow
fell in the microscope. But the result
was not proof. Only a tentative certainty.

And the result of it was not knowing
if rain had an angle, or if absence
could be cut. Where the floor met the pirouette
there could be no impossible result
only a hauntless wind in the mind.
Because the more it turned, the less it shone.
The less it shone, the more it turned.

[ fragment 3 ] by sean s

after First by Michelle Naka Pierce

It was a hypothesis first.
Who said the loss was a result of

knowing what was, once impossible?
Thus the loss came with the possible.
The wind picking up speed, gusting

against the glass panes above the creek.
We do not know who. Perhaps one

washed clean from the rain. One
a certainty, an acute angle, a bond. A
squall of raindrops cut through by

a tentative suggestion. An absence
(caused) by this appearance. A callous wood floor

reaching, kicking through the window. A
hypostasis of the loss, our possibility, our
forgotten necessarily not, the wind

picking up snow from the north.

[ fragment ] by sean s

after First by Michelle Naka Pierce

A hypostasis
it will be. Between word and word, (and) word,
and will be, another between.
The loss of the impossible a result of not
knowing. A breeze creaks along
a north wind, we say north wind when
it is from the north.
Not headed north. Not tended. It took me along
to learn that what was ahead will be (a long time)
without a name.

Floodlight by Amanda Deutch

after First by Michelle Naka Pierce and Sleeplessness is Reward Itself...by JKD

Floodlight

A slip of metal. Off to buy one, sexy and squeaking of promises. Pirouette on a washing machine. Rain can be the simplest form of sloughing. From the rain—a kind of turning. Bits of certainty pierce out from under glass streets. Borrowing socks on both coasts—East and West. Determined, these calluses are proof of spiritual night walking. Slips of silk and metal grind till they glow from the North. So with the rain comes moss and a certain shift. As the bumper sticker says, reading is sexy. Snow, wind picking up speed, rain, a sunny afternoon, breezes along the creek—all in a day’s work. What once was impossible now just is.

intimating, by JKD

After Michelle Naka Pierce & Chris Pusateri reading ensemble at X, Feb 10, 2009, & an email from Christina Herzer.

facts missing memoir's aggregate slippage. names, or the heat in the evening bed ceiling snow vulnerable secret direction of you fading. lie. glass sleep. a picture yellowed as persistent film. think, closer to me, hearing an old, heavy voice. childlike breadth of scuffed knees, pick-up self recurring in time zone's return. fountains turn back rock canyon quarry's mouthless history. speechless documents graph you to you to close everyday content's failure to risk imprinting the written space printed, printing this unreeled distance. white breath, neck cramps, a city (India), house open to four seasons, direction a compass-character you pick up like a toy consequence. the otherness in/of the familiar. almost. as in the way this gap (space) (tooth) reaches.