Angle of Yaw. Ben Lerner
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a silver, and the children screaming, flying machine, in terror, he puts down, with pleasure, and in the eyes of the cousin, your Baron, who respects no, who is no, displayed like, longer, objects, tears, of price, remain your, humble servant, I
THE PORTION OF THE STORY THAT REMAINS after the other components have been dissolved by churning. The woman attends the night game to watch the snow fall near the lights. Only the body of the protagonist is undergoing change. A whistle sweeps the town of meaning.
THE AVERAGE READER only perceives the initial and final letters of a word. He only reads the longest and most peculiar words in a sentence, intuiting the remaining language. The average reader often turns two pages at once, without perceiving a breach in narrative. He picks up a book, quickly flips through its pages, and believes it read. Conversely, he often reads unawares, will process and even vocalize a text he believes himself to be composing, while in fact reading skywriting, between the lines, on the wall. In your most intimate moments, my average reader, do you not rely on large cards held beyond the audience’s sight? Have you ever applauded without being prompted by an illuminated sign?
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA has launched a man into space. He claims the only man-made structure visible from the shuttle is the Great Wall. What about the Kansai International Airport (which is sinking)? The light from the Luxor Casino? What about smog? For visible from space read in the eyes of God.
THE PHENOMENA OF EXPERIENCE have been translated into understanding. Plug the exposed voids in the veneer cores to eliminate nesting. We live in the best of all possible worlds. Stain the compound to match the plywood finish.
THE AUTHOR EXPOSES HIMSELF IN PUBLIC like film. Every surface secretly desires to be ruled. A faint hazy cone in the plane of the ecliptic precedes the tabulation of a body by a train. Read only to resist the temptation to write. Skew lines and slickensides in an era of polarized light. The zip disk of snuff films your son defends as research has divided the community into infinite subdistances. Born losers born ready to be born again, we await the mayor’s address in metal chairs. Then it hits me: I’m the mayor.
THE DOG IN THE CARTOON shoots a gun, overtakes the bullet in a car, and awaits it with an open mouth. Slight, continuous changes in the shapes of the scenery give the illusion of motion. In lieu of erections, sprouting cephalic contusions. Otherwise reduced to a pile of ash, the eyes of the mischievous cat remain, blinking. Contiguity substituted for substitution: flatten the duck with a frying pan and he becomes a frying pan. The bear indifferently fingers the holes in his chest. The giant ham around which the episode is organized weighs nothing, appears slippery, and is ultimately swallowed by a mouse. The popular breakfast sandwich is made of cartoon flesh. The child actor who worked opposite the dragon is scarred for life. Open your eyes. You’re still holding the dynamite.
NO MATTER HOW BIG YOU MAKE A TOY, a child will find a way to put it in his mouth. There is scarcely a piece of playground equipment that has not been inside a child’s mouth. However, the object responsible for the greatest number of choking deaths, for adults as well as children, is the red balloon. Last year alone, every American choked to death on a red balloon.
NERVOUS EXHAUSTION FROM PROLONGED FLIGHT cannot excuse her coloring. Nor that she was blinded at birth with a hot wire to increase the beauty of her singing. A culture that lacks a concept of lack remains foreign, no matter the quantity of aid, the quantity of coverage. What do the homeless say in lieu of Get out? One day we will all be landed. Remaining sensate into a late stage of decomposition, aka abstraction. Delivering supplies from the air is no problem. But to the air?
A WALL IS TORN DOWN to expand the room and we grow distant. At the reception, cookies left over from the intervention. In the era before the flood, you could speak in the second person. Now the skylighted forecourt is filled with plainclothesmen. I would like to draw your attention. Like a pistol? In the sense of a sketch? Both, she said, emphasizing nothing, if not emphasis. Squint, and the room dissolves into manageable triangles. Close your eyes completely and it reappears.
BEFORE THE INVENTION OF MOVIES, nobody moved. Rain like a curtain of beads. Snow like the absence of snow. Quit putting your mouth in my words, I said to the officer, before falling into his arms. Love of the uniform in lieu of uniform love. Lower your voice in a church, decrease your font in a poem. Not a sword suspended by a hair, but a mine triggered by a wire. At midnight, the question turns rhetorical. Does invention have a father? In an age of mechanical reproduction, is any sin original?
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