To: J. Snyder
RE: letter of 5/8
resting unopened in the din of emptiness hardwood floored room
emptied around it to ferment your words I could hardly think to
open it before days had passed would be premature keeping the
darkening the pencil on the green page first sharpened browning
heavy the graphite sharpness of the J. Fermenting. I would lose it.
Mentally. I feared opening your letter in the dim of what I was
seated in this room you'd see me this room my fingers
folding/refolding your letter instead of what they were supposed
they were to be doing I was not supposed to have enough time
stacked full with ideas. With ideas where do poets get all these
ideas. To send letters. To balance the impulse to open/unopen your
letter is like the foreground of that background sound when the
television is first turned on before the picture comes to and the air
in the room is heavy saturated with static. Probes. What I was
supposed to be doing what I was supposed to have covering
hardwood floors to keep the rain from coming in pieces of my
juxtaposition my own letters my own nerve impulses first as
metaphors second as intended imprinted darker thinner heavier as
when you first sharpen. I had forgotten. Sounded like dryness. I'm
not Poet. I'm here alone and with it not with it and my fingers are
swarmy and God I don't have the right chair to sit and there's no
holding with a pen my hair like a coxcomb. Note to me: Cues. I
would have to read it slowly I am afraid I'll read and shock me into
the reality that my potential is closing the windows when I hear
it's going to rain fear ruining the hardwood. The hardness of the
wood. Without covering. Pens are still in their packaging. These
floors are bare worth thousands. To me as a testament. Now.
Quickly over the first time read so as not to be saturated and feel
the leaving alone of it has vinegared me inside puckered so I can't
open my tongue out to catch whatever I had forgotten whatever's
failing please be falling from me your pencil
in salutation. To me.
Jules.