Significant Others Scale
From tomorrow the gas-lamps in the city’s streets will not be lit.
Anatoly Mariengof, The Cynics, 1928
A and B, pressing against either side of a closed door / trying to fit the outline of each other / saying, when the fit seems close, only “now” / repeating again and again until certain.
Allan Kaprow, Comfort Zones, 1975
I want to remain just a surname on the list.
Oleg Sentsov, 2016
The sun unseen as through the holes of a colander
lesser light strikes down / enters from the side
a place in which there appears no one / no body
no budding romance blossoming / no we
just the I causing all sight to collapse
jean-claws in the corner tidying his whiskers
the pubic hair drafted into shapes resembling a T-bone steak
suddenly meeting like this
in the otherwise not-for-profit night
no great vertigo
of language
the trap staying tightly shut
no in here / just desire
handed over in hyperlink-blue
with the tongue buried deep
against the being of thought
the T-bone of feeling / the thought of being
the feeling that did not want to be felt / with-
held
felt nonetheless
a few words interjected / then
an ankle glances at a wristwatch
a cuticle gazes at a sleeve
unseen in succession
the face remaining the sorry same
unmoved by its own affect
gravity redetected
false speeches pushed into the mouths of plants
the I continuing to make things im-
possible:
cops out / cluster headache / ~total love & blessings to all~
sentiments evacuating every neural alleyway
the I / meaning / sure
you can call yourself a communist
doesn’t mean you’ll survive a revolution—
the world turning nightly
on its axis
escalators gliding with backwards brilliance
the complete and utter seamlessness of the story
attempting to relate to a phenomenon that exceeds it
all oaks in the area
promptly pumping tannings through their veins
pouting their plump lips
in no one’s direction
as though nothing on earth had ever happened
in the thinker’s cell
too many attempts to be meaningful
sky-writing “divination” 4 “strategy” against the clouds
refulgent in its rain / desire underfoot
clock hands overlapping at a quarter to three
proliferating I’s penetrating the continually
rewritten clouds / barricading all pleasure in the plural
like attempting to tie a rose to a collision spot
or land “the people” jelly-side up
jean-claws employing his whiskers to gauge an opening
in the fence
the assertion of people as single letters
suggesting
that the I seizes this experience and let it become sentences
too tired to try it again
Lotte L.S. is a poet living in Great Yarmouth, the furthest easterly outlier of England. More of her work can be read here. She keeps an infrequent tinyletter, Shedonism.
aglimpseof.net 