trapeze, as is recall to mind a misheard good-bye, recouping what losses end up costing in the end almost nothing, unless you value the time you wasted, balancing on siding rails, waiting for trains that never came, waiting even for winter. say the words with mouth muscles ‘til memory’s become a physical thing, a well-practiced and deft flick of some synapse, quicker reactions now even at your advanced age, even with the injuries scarred over with flat-press’d creases in the manuscript, ink staining what should’ve been histories, instead are tweets, yelps, coughs into elbows. practice accents & rehearse dialogue to reconstruct that tremor’s unfolding, to study the mechanism with which we wear the stage thin, are bleached out by houselights, peel off the mask then the skin then the script, then the score which’s a number, but it’s also a map. probably you saw this coming, as you waited, balanced, finding equilibrium, vibrations rising through yr shoesoles telegraphing what’s about to happen to us, to this, to anything still as time’s millwheel turns, etc., like a panoramic background forever scrolling the life- like life, the same tree reappears just when you thought, finally, you’d made it out, were getting somewhere, could make it clean, no name & no script, no accustomed silence to fill with signifier. wind sculpts these ravenous territories. smoke baffles the horizon’s definition. on highways their painted lines’ll fade. squalls of blips, pixilated drywall dust. clear-eyed and tufted, the birds gripe. an intrusion in a space-time continuum. the solid waste management exercise. that hold we’d had before losing grip. the chalice, a dog bowl, rusted knives. called to testify before the brokerage.