from two | Ted Dodson
Any writing that doesn't move toward love will crash against a wall or some other hard surface, like that time the brakes failed on a train entering Estación Once. - Cecilia Pavón, "A Perfect Day"
Ski pronounced sky could be a variation on love when you're not looking and only a vital whisper extends as if to say there's something here you can depend on. An unbroken wing or the last bite of dinner is saved for you. I tried to find Cecilia Pavón's website to gather some general information about my new writer crush, which seems to change a few times a year even though I don't consider myself all that capricious. I found a Tumblr of hers. It appears unused and dilapidated like some shitposting termite crawled into her admin and filled the homepage with 2015 consumer "Top Best" lists. "Top Best Waring Blenders Reviews 2015," "Top Best Ironing Boards Reviews 2015," "Top Best Pedestal Fans Reviews 2015," et al. Strange truisms escape from these untrustworthy gateways: "Let's face it. The fast-paced lifestyle of today is tiring and stressful." Someone speaking to their friends a table over from me at the coffee shop just said, "Ha ha! All I know is that I don't ever want to work again." As if any life that doesn't move toward love will crash against labor. Vehicles escape through fire in harrowing uploads and leave a lasting impression on the film industry. Whenever real disaster strikes, our virtual assessment shifts toward reality as a means to invest in what can't be forgotten, what we see when we close our eyes, which is different than love, a thing that dissolves or burns out or is made unobtrusive at a later point in time. It's a shaky definition, lo-fi lexicology. I'm really asking for a friend. I spend my mornings writing these loose poems about the many ways to say the same thing, often sensing the instability of this time, whether something will be written in the span allotted or wasted on free wi-fi with purchase of coffee (cappuccino) before I, moving obliquely toward love, crash against labor. A day's unfinished work waits on a hard drive or as series of neon post-its on my keyboard. Consistency and regularity alienate as they push these words—yesterday, today, tomorrow— as interlocutors of happenstance playing themselves off as near divine agenda. A threshold closes itself with a silent though furious whisking of curtains, spiraling into an impersonation of place. Inextricably knotted to a distant sense of loss, a thread is strung into an uncertain void that grows darker as it stretches, and believing you can distinguish anything, you imagine where the string is tied, where you are certain there is an end because of course. What else could be keeping this string so taut when you're holding only one end? Rain over a vast body of water makes little to no difference, and the conditions divert relief even farther from where its needed. The coupon for free refills expired, so I hold my finger over the date, a strategic response to inevitability strip mining our last reliable assets before a clean sweep shuts everything in an offsite storage unit. A feasible utopia could be born out of decisions and moments like this? I'm seriously asking. I had a car I sold for rent once. Sometimes I see it around. [Brooklyn, 11-11-18]
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