NestNotes

"I speak to you; I promise, I say something; listen to me."

I really, really tried to get into this book. I think to really do it justice I need more time, and probably need to type the whole thing out. I just found it impossible to read in a linear fashion. It has to do with the long lines & big spaces between them, a beaded necklace all broken now pieces disordered in a bowl. Instead of reading I jumped. There are so many beautiful, striking lines that jumped with me. It was like crossing a river hopping on rocks. The line I quoted above made me feel guilty. I should trust Mei-mei Berssenbrugge that it's supposed to be hard & she's making me smarter. But I am recalcitrant. So I am about to do an experiment. I want to know what will happen if I copy out one of the poems & change the spacing & enjamb lines. It could be the way in. The key! (Also because it is very helpful for me to read something by typing it out. If you really want to know it better, get some foundry type & have at it with a hand composing stick.) I'll find out.

Parachute on the desert, blue-white
with light, eleven sheep head-to-head
in a circle, asleep. Enjoyment and substance
in real time involve clearings
about which pivot opaque zones. Real
is a span of visibility, inasmuch as your flesh
is not chaotic, of a contingency. The real thing
substitutes for another who’s not
representable, as he gathers up parachute and delivery.

If I stay here and you mean something,
the part in common is disjunct
from what you mean, like my hands touching.
That you’re telepathic means nothing;
you’ve facts you can’t know
which still work in connections of my experience.

A rock in rain distributing water along texture
is my response to experience. Inasmuch
as your flesh is an interplay
of the disjunction needed for identity, flesh is texture.

Our meeting occurs near a hill
you climb every day to water transplanted iris.

Why don’t you let others do that?