Terence Winch
Memoir
I remember a party, he remarked. Her underwear
signified the grueling rehearsal. Infectious.
Outgoing. He picked the place. He whispered
excitedly, in a trashcan. He was really angry.
I remember the spaces stuck out like an armchair,
she said. Small light green masterpieces
went back and forth. He said a mask on the face
in distress is like seven chains around his neck.
She said some people have it, some don't. He was
among the last explorers to reach her, not the first.
The Banalities
The contest is over. I lost, you lost.
I had an intensely anatomical body
and gave it to you. Thirty years ago
you dropped the bomb on me. I submitted.
I like the exam, as long as it's tasteful.
You remember personality? How it posed
naked at all our meetings, till the bulb lit up?
What was so wrong with that? What was so wrong?
The stigmata felt weird, especially during the love-in
when we noticed the beautiful pariahs across the yard.
Germ Plasma
Using verbs that bite, the cold period stands
in before the troops. Snow is on the way:
we tell our fathers that we love them. He spies
a spear on the hard ground. Never give up
your weapon, he says. Destroy it or bury it
If you are about to be captured. The maps
are being redrawn as he speaks, drunk with
promises of victory. Even if I decide it's time
for a haircut, newspapers proclaim the dawn
of a day that will never reach its own edges.
Bourgeois World
At the party, we shouted insults at the hostess.
She served us raw fish/ we wanted red meat.
She hated our jokes about the dry heaves.
On the way home we saw a bunny in the headlights.
You smash the windows and toss the feathers.
You sit in the kitchen weeping in the dark
listening to the debate on the Senate filibuster.
Time is immemorial if the self is inconceivable.
The ceiling fans all fixed and going at once,
the house on the runway ready to take off.
Captions
Left to right: Sigmund Freud, age sixteen, with Schopenhauer,
Glenn Miller, and a naked girl, in front of Wal-Mart, pondering
psychic disturbances. Freud had just completed electrolysis treatment
and was feeling an active desire to investigate the sexual hereafter.
Fig. 27: Kierkegaard, once again, after his conviction on multiple
fraud counts, just before his famous discussion with Wittgenstein
on the hidden meaning of brain travel, ca. 1873. Photo courtesy
of the Dark Network of Light, © Curtis S. Edward (deceased).
(Opposite) These high-definition 3-D mock-ups of the man standing on the bed
were thought initially to prove that amazing things can and do happen.
Full Disclosure
The way things come apart. Information leaks
all over you. Sharon was nude. We refused to eat
on the basis of video surveillance dogma. My salad
is in a persistent vegetative state. Meat means war.
The drums joined in from up above, as though
our scans matched your phone records. Everything
is legal, everything is wrong. I get a bad result
out of you. I can't give you anything but habeas corpus.
Imagine you are playing tennis. Now imagine the ball
breaks the window in a blue house where violins lurk unseen.