Mean Free Path. Ben Lerner

      The petals are glass. That’s all you need to know

      Lines have been cut and replaced

      With their opposites. Did I say that out loud

      A beautiful question. Barbara is dead

      Until I was seventeen, I thought windmills

      Turned from the fireworks to watch

      Their reflection in the tower

      Made wind. Brushed metal apples

      Green to the touch

      All pleads for an astounding irrelevance

      Structured like a language, but I

      I like the old music, the audible kind

      We made love to in the crawl space

      Without our knowledge. Robert is dead

      Take my voice. I don’t need it. Take my face

      I have others. Pathos whistles through the typos

      Parentheses slam shut. I’m writing this one

      With my eyes closed, listening to the absence of

      Surface effects. Patterns of disappearance. I

      I kind of lost it back there in the trees, screaming

      About the complexity of intention, but

      But nothing. Come to bed. Reference is a woman

      Comfortable with failure. The surface is dead

      Wave to the cameras from the towers

      Built to sway. I promised I would never

      Tell me, whose hand is this. A beautiful

      Question her sources again

      Unhinged in a manner of speaking

      Crossed with stars, a rain that can be paused

      So we know we’re dreaming on our feet

      Like horses in the city. How sad. Maybe

      No maybes. Take a position. Don’t call it

      Night-vision green. Think of the children

      Running with scissors through the long

      Where were we? If seeing this as portraiture

      Makes you uncomfortable, wake up

      Wake up, it’s time to begin

      The forgetting. Direct modal statements

      Wither under glass. A little book for Ari

      Built to sway. I admire the use of felt

      Theory, like swimming in a storm, but object

      To antirepresentational bias in an era of

      You’re not listening. I’m sorry. I was thinking

      How the beauty of your singing reinscribes

      The hope whose death it announces. Wave

      In an unconscious effort to unify my voice

      I swallow gum. An old man weeps in the airport

      Over a missed connection. The color of money is

      Night-vision green. Ari removes the bobby pins

      I remove the punctuation. Our freezer is empty

      Save for vodka and film. Leave the beautiful

      Questions unanswered. There are six pages left

      Of our youth and I would rather swallow my tongue

      Than waste them on description

      A cry goes up for plain language

      In identical cities. Zukofsky appears in my dreams

      Selling knives. Each exhibit is a failed futurity

      A star survived by its own light. Glass anthers

      Confuse bees. Is that pornography? Yes, but

      But nothing. Come to reference. A mode of undress

      Equal to fascism becomes obligatory

      In identical cities. Did I say that already? Did I say

      The stranglehold of perspective must be shaken off

      A live tradition broadcast with a little delay

      Takes the place of experience, like portraits

      Reciprocating gazes. Zukofsky appears in my dreams

      Offering his face. Each of us must ask herself

      Why am I clapping? The content is announced

      Through disappearance, like fireworks. Wave

      After wave of information breaks over us

      Without our knowledge. If I give you my denim

      Will you simulate distress

      To lay everything waste in the name of renewal

      Haven’t we tried that before? Yes, but

      But not in Canada. The vanguard succumbs

      To a sense of its own importance as easily as swans

      Succumb to the flu. I’m writing this one

      With my nondominant hand in the crawl space

      Under the war. I can feel an axis snapping

      In my skull, and soon I will lose the power

      To select, while retaining the power to

      All these flowers look the same to me

      Night-vision green. There is nothing to do

      In the desert but read Penthouse and lift weights

      My blood is negative. That’s all you need to know

      Sophisticated weaponry marries the traditional

      Pleasures of perspective to the new materiality

      Of point-and-click. I’m writing this one

      As a woman comfortable with leading

      A prisoner on a leash

      Combine was the word I was looking for

      Back there in the trees. My blood is

      Scandinavian Modern. I kind of lost it

      But enough about me. To return with a difference

      Haven’t we tried that before? Yes, but

      But not from the air. Unique flakes form

      Indistinguishable drifts in a process we call

      All these words look the same to me

      Fascism. Arrange the flowers by their price

      Then, where despair had been, the voice

      Of Nina Simone. Parentheses open

      On