Hyper-awareness is such a flatly ironic drag when it
lacks the ability to go beyond itself, within itself,
the verysame way we mistake saying what (we think)
we’re doing for telling the truth, even going so far
as to imagine this language ours simply because
something must be?

This winter won’t be like the last because this one
looks at us differently, despite any and all linguistic-
cognitive acts of connective reclamation inspired by
socio-cultural-derived desires for sense-carving and
excessive hyphenation. I would send a note to The
University to say a sarcastic thanks for all this grand
superfluity but they’d take it humorlessly and ask
for more money.

She quoted Kafka and I thought of the zeitgeist because
I’m obsessed with essence like it holds the key to
all kinds of cages in search of birds. It’s almost as
fun to tell a story as to wonder why. I don’t know,
I had to tell someone. Were this the Old West,
I might just ride off one day in a fit of magical realism,
singing with a voice that comes from somewhere and
everywhere about the presence of absences,
forgetful and free.