the symbol for you was a wandering spirit

in a book of enigmas

– Jorge Luis Borges to the nightingale
Philomela Knight's

favourite part of the week

is Wednesday morning –

just before her Dialectics

Tutorial meets. [Gk. dialektike:

Plato: art of formulating ideas.

Ln. dialectica: primary defn.:

art of discussion & debate.]

Behind a plastic sheet, while

rubbing a compact moon

of tangerine flavoured soap

along the length of her arms

& thighs, she recites (out

loud) broken pieces of

the textual curricula:

The sublime object

dissolves in the raptures

of a bottomless memory.

Wet-hair deltas conflate

like pleasure & pain in the centre

of her back. Larval white foam

accumulates at her knee-pits.

The rhythmic chora of her lips

in rehearsal unlaces sutures

at the junctions of in-terior /

ex-terior. Braids together

suppositions ethnographically

far apart as Canada and Paris.

Emotion is a liquefying

substance which pours into

a person and dissolves her.

Her cortical appendages

beginning to flex.