Spiral Orb Ten Frances Richard

Cave

Frances Richard

Grasping a signless

piece of light that was going to stand in

To connect to

this, achieve the kinds of things that we expect

from flowers (what becomes dark

is bright now; what’s bright

darkens) (vulnerable

to looking agitated) They are like

us: We know

that we are going to be photographed.

So—just

wondering: Can I use your cave? Your cave

will be the cave in the allegory of the cave; here it is

outlined in greenish brightness

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º º º º ºº ºº ºº º º º ºº ºº ºº º º º ºº ºº ºº º º º ºº ºº ºº º º º

The albatross parents

feed chicks blue bottle-caps, red

bottle-caps, translucent yellow

cigarette lighters, white bottle-caps, green

bottle-caps. They pluck them

from a nest of instants drifting by and changing

shape and battered by deep water, gravity, wind to

scale remaining visible in size, they pluckest them out

dartingly and incorporate. Here is no water but holes

in white matter in the baby’s only body, stable

damage, just some blood collapse. “In the secret part

of the open—” I wrote, “in the open

part of the secret—” as if the species

interior to a baby’s fluid x were legible. Bad fragments.

Keep talking how you talk so that the words lift, flit

or peel in shimmering tattered surges scrolling off

the screen or paper, off the face, shift on the air as petals

or fatty-membrane sheets transplantable, hot networked

with capillaries minorly wounded, held in forceps or bare

fingers oozing. Which isn’t to say

the opalescent plasma wave degrading is like speech; is like the body

sitting up and climbing calmly off the body in ghost movies. Hot pulses scraped

off thought-contact. Bad speculum, bad species, bad

chiasmus. All spangled with a light-shock, ébloui (and I was worrying

the whole time about walking home alone in—how really

to describe—an after dark). (But liked two images: 1. the dash

as “a strikethrough through no thought” and 2. “the pudding mix

through the image of a pudding”)

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What would you call these slack-nefarious

tremens in the mind º º º º º º º º º º º º

to excavate, to ante up? Since that is part of what

talking with/to someone even is—

º º º º º º º º º º º º To think the chick as warm, as permeated

by bright particles is held, reuptaken momentarily, then dropped, too

heavy, too diffuse. I just responsible

for this electric item, this one flicker, though you know likewise

how the baby has a cord, a narrow whitish plastic hollow line

taped to his cheek, entering his nostril, to deliver

water? How identify “the sheer sound

of nature in its permanent unrest.” How represent º º º º º º º º º º º º

º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º “the world keeps looking

at us”

~~~~~

Frances Richard is the author of Anarch. (Futurepoem, 2012), The Phonemes (Les Figues Press, 2012) and See Through (Four Way Books, 2003). She writes frequently about contemporary art and is co-author, with Jeffrey Kastner and Sina Najafi, of Odd Lots: Revisiting Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Fake Estates” (Cabinet Books, 2005). Currently she teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.