Balance, as in a sense of.
As in keeping one’s. Not

wanting to fall over, to fall
flat on the face, in front of

other people. Or even alone
when the pain is sharper

& you do not need to keep
it back. In check, as in

checks & balances. Not
wanting to go too far too

fast, not wanting to go
until the last stone is set

in stone. Not wanting to,
& all the time losing track

of what it is you’re trying
to do, to keep a few light

words alive & spinning freely
inside the air. In balance.

hoping to find interesting others of their praenomens. But the only people that are there are Deirdre who is holding a derringer on Deborah & muttering imprecations of what will happen to her if she keeps on playing around with Deirdre’s boyfriend Drew.

Desire & Dread walk into another bar, & this time Dread enters first. All they find is a dromedary in the corner & a drunken sailor they don’t know what they should do with so early in the morning.

The third bar is depressing, the fourth bar downright drab. Deciding there is only a negative drawdown to be found in drifting through the debris left by the drinking deeds of other dreary denizens of the demimonde, they draw a line across this pursuit & instead visit more inspiring places.

Desire & Dread walk into a cupcake shop hand in hand. Desire pauses, then says to Dread. “We seem to be inexorably drawn to one another. Let’s publicly declare our love.” Dread looks across at Desire then moves closer & caresses their hand. “A delightful & dramatic idea,” they say. “Let’s drink to it without delay.”

Desire & Dread walk into a bar.

after the painting by Magritte

The literal meaning of jan
ken pon, the Japanese equi-
valent of rock, scissors, paper,
is ‘beginning with stone.’ That

was the given. To go with it,
various other items were
then subjected to a battery of
tests. This painting shows

some of them undergoing the
fire test, to see how easily
they burn, how long for, &
how much is left behind. Only

one additional item survived
the testing relatively unscathed. To
choose the third, a handoff was be-
gun between the best of the

first round failures. Paper won.

The lost chatter of men, the
exteriority of written &
figurative elements—very
few persons write a good
letter. In this split & drifting

space, strange bonds are knit.
Two garrulous mutes use
elegant language, yet use it
easily. A word can take the
place of an object if the paren-

thesis is avoided. Neatness is
important. The measure of
the “iron horse” is how many
missives it drags behind. No
mass, no name, form without

volume. Word & object are
deployed in two different
dimensions. Emptiness undoes
the space. Verbal lightning
flashes come naturally to a child.

Sources:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley