Don't you have a map?
A collaborative, traveling essay in letters
'twixt Erika Howsare & Jen Tynes.

Part 5, E to J-

Right now:   Cows coming home one by one.

Without “judgment”:  The state squashes its contents together.

Copycats back:  The yellow bird lopes away, bravely.

Fixtures:   Is the doctor blind to beauty? Does the cat notice the view?

A form:   Well, what I see is that the top of the tree is moving but the bottom 
is still.

Rhythm out:   A phrase was attached to my eye all day. Ants swarming and why. 
Wide bands of dark and light in the sky, or underwater moaning, or 
riverside slapping the tail.

Look closely:   The youngness of what lies in the field, in the sun that others 
wearing black escape, snort horizontally.

Local water:  What have we discovered? Fossils? What I see in memory is flickering
pizza light in Dillwyn. Crickets pausing (apparently) for breath. This decay of each
line like the neon has a half-life too. This unnatural bake of hair and cloud. The
hair you know has feathers in her mouth and wants to bring them inside.

Shirking:   But inside is electric and doesn’t live with either of us.

Preservation:   Even as she’s destroying it I’ve got my book out trying to figure 
what it is. The “clear grey chest” and “black eye line” are flying 
around and not on their own steam. Little downy furs.

Covered in glass:  People inside cars that are going to church.

A bird copycats:  Serendipity, we speak interiorly, like laying down tiles. Do we 
copycat our own doors and windows? Is “spine” or “laundry” a word?

   I worry that sentences are mirrors.

Cellular:   One drives east and west at once. Easy win(ter).

Tell time by:   Being chewed is some mark; so is being loudly erased, which 
they could discern on the hill although they hadn’t bought tickets. 
“I could hear the chord changes.” I kept typing. The cows all past now.

Even water:   See “blue-winged teal” and note “lacks facial crescent.” 


Water (it):   Throw a tack in the wash, sister, see what it sounds like. Or paw at 
a scaly leg. Searching/pawing through hair.

Fired it:   Model homes lean off their temporary foundations.

Copycats back:  One spreads its legs to two blades.

The line:   So that what I see is header, footer. Two hundred fast tiny birds 
like a streamer winding east. Roof, ground.

Resurrected:   Easter made the petals fall off.


J responds to E at http://z-cultsoc.livejournal.com/ in about two weeks.
Please visit http://www.horselesspress.com/amap.html for the whole hog.
Email Erika & Jen: editors AT horselesspress DOT com.

- posted by Ivy @ 12:28 PM ¦ | ¦