To be bled into by this or that borderless
event while the birds were away, the very
ones that were never not there. They had
flown
the fall of Troy, what Huff had been call-
ing the fall of Troy, loath not to euphemize the
knife he’d gone under, the cyst on his ilium,
pel-
vic dismay. Playing loose with fate, mak-
ing fun of it, making light, was prophecy, what
Huff meant, what Huff the Prophet meant…
A
light rain was coming down in Low Forest, a
drape or a veil of sorts, a curtain of beads it
looked like. One lay back or one looked out, an
eye
on each drop if one could, Nub at the torpe-
do prez’s mercy, a harder rain eventually
to fall. Why were we there, I was asking Huff, of
all possible places why were we there, another
feel-
good cop show on the tol’you in front of us.
I thought of my niece and my nephew, long since
gone, never not no way I was over it, never it
was
only the way things go… We were watching the
tol’you reminiscing the times we’d been in Hous-
ton, a static song of not yet readiness, a street or
a
neighborhood we knew. What will being dead
be like the abandoned boy was asking. The a-
bandoned girl was asking as well, a disconsolate
duet
thereby enacted, static itself grown sonorous,
an articulate brogue regret. Between them and
what being dead would be like there were nearly
nine minutes, a floating coffin had been leaving
the
church when we tuned in… A light rain was
coming down, a harbinger of rain to come, col-
loidal song of the not yet ready, Nub’s oncoming
collapse. We born with a knee on our necks leaned
on
the what-it-was window, a safety pin hummed in
the ground outside. It was a wet, gray play on words,
the reign of our lives not mattering coming down,
no
more not mattering we yelled and clamored for, the
numberless days of outrage it would take… The
word “moment” was on every tongue, we who’d’ve
rath-
er been mystics or philosophic pissed off, so vi-
cious we could see Nub’s way was. The birds had
come back having never left, a certain way they had
of being not being there. We sat with big books open
upon
our laps. It was we who had gone in search of Mount
Qaf, a cyborg or a sunbird said to live there, the Simorgh
they said it was… Where had we been when the birds
who
had never left got back, we ourselves who had nev-
er been birds? How was it to be back having never
left? So went the questions against the walls of our
heads.
But for the pictures the books on our laps bored us,
quizzical couplets it was too late for, unsurprising
rhyme. The word “moment” cut everyone’s lips and made
them bleed, pecked by beaks it seemed, the birds having
left
and come back, the birds who were never not there…
It was all another day in photo-op Nub, another day a-
mong the so-called colorless ones. The birds were back
hav-
ing never gone, lives not mattering no matter, soul no
one spoke of anymore. The abandoned boy was a white-
haired lad raised among nestlings, all atop the earth atop
the
bull atop the fish, not what had been said but also that, no
sign
the only one there
was
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones