Susan Smith Nash
Excerpts from Fly-Over States of Mind
Published by Light and Dust Books
7112 27th Ave.
Kenosha, Wisconsin 53143
ISBN: 0-87924-078-4Cover graphics from two year-long mail art collaborations between Reid Wood and Karl Young. Copyright 1998 and 2000 by Reid Wood and Karl Young.
OSTRACOD
Ostracod: any of various minute, mainly freshwater crust-
aceans of the order Ostracoda, marked by a bivalve carapace completely enclosing the body.No one believed Beauty and the Beast the first time, except in Cocteau's "lustral bath of childhood." The mind breaks the ceiling as if memory were a matter of physics or abandoned hope. Love the beast for what he is. An impossible belief in the goodness of the human heart. The war is over. Why fight for what can be begged?
YAPOK
Yapok: an aquatic marsupial mammal, Chironectes minimus
of tropical America, with dense fur, webbed hind feet, and a
long tail.He wrote his name in black ink on a black nametag. She kept blank the blank space where she should have written a name. Theory, models, development. When they met, they shook hands, thereby exchanging warmth and humanity, not labels. Unconscious exteriorization of language: it was a beautiful, rare moment. Later, when she wrote about it in her journal, she used blue ink to write on the blue page. Blue on blue became completely invisible. Semiotics again. But undetectable. It told everything. Social control.
VAIR
Vair: a heraldic representation of fur.
Dog de-evolved. Brain 42 percent smaller, corazón cuarenta y siete más grande. How are we not our own ancestral wolves? Footprints in the mud. La sangre el color de hambre. DOG--Il sonne creux comme ma guitare--I was born in that year & now it's over--the year of yelping at the full moon, cantando cantando cantando en vez de morir. I die every day with fur. Il jase la soif. Hand against hand against hand against flesh, blood, ink, book. Huesos, calaveras, polvo--el lodo de la vida. Impermanencia. Il t'arrivera malheur, parce que tu es faux. What is not false? Handclap or the hunt. Shivering up against the soot of a fire in Paleolithic France making art in a space that was once a cool dry hole. Vamos a dormir. Is this the result of 20,000 years evolution? Is this all? Tu te moques de moi.--No tenemos miedo de ti, aunque you skulk around my house, hanging on my every weakness--les femmes faisaient des signes de croix--so now you raid my garbage bones thickening in self defense--I see a thousand felurs-de-lis spotting the hide on the cave wall--mlagro tras milagro--in the fire--les contours d'un visage--DOG.
PATELLA
Patella: a flat, triangular bone at the front of the knee joint.
Theories of surface. Run scavenger to eat black the underneath of rivers, souls, harbors, signifiers. Catfish. Sex. Silence takes the most characteristic form. You know strange. I know mirror. Somehow we know mutually & yes centuries activist come one mind time for music swallowing up bottom-sucking fish for growth or purely woman. Intimate is not brittle. Give paradox. Mimesis. Imitation of life. If too clean, the imitation is not life. If too perfect, the genes are never human. The doctor self- knighted good. Good self Master Dolorosa eterne washed-out standing for if wished-out could be another. A white car towed in for the bones. Organs commit selling foot-past-foot, don't we foot repast bill under score reality melting out the sex. Catfish. Egyptian for monument.
LACCOLITH
Laccolith: a mass of igneous rock intruded between layers of sedimentary rock, causing uplift.
Haul the investigation around in leaf bag bundled up plastic like mouth wrapped 'round financial planning. Drag snaking cheapest hurricane footstool up on pavement. Gone to tourists. All t-shirted beyond stem. Have beer in spite of big? Kindling most Kafkaesque of the two. One man running from apartment, naked. Naked is my girth sprawled over meaning. Dissolve essentialism. Run from running, in case you have nothing else to do. Go into sweat. I'm not too upset. This time.
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