ISSUE 7
Last Updated: 15 April 2005

CHAMPS (fields) & between
Kathleen Fraser

1.

It was raining heavily and snowing further up the road and she left for
the appointment, both ahead of and behind her expectation, in spite of the visual
impression of crashing cars and SUVs, swerving bodies in pain on the 6 o'clock
news, again a swerving laid out to any random viewer, in this case herself a
cinematic event to which she would gradually attach herself as she drove forward
and slowly shifted gears through the lengthening

*

any random viewer, in this case

2.

You were merely setting the stage while other clients talked about the
"divinely ordained" as if objects of differing colors did not slide in and out
of red cells of chronic prisoners whom they were on that particular day and
you knew what was commonplace and you wanted to avoid the
commonplace thinking your personal uniqueness was beyond dictation, yet
this fact repeated itself in his and her accounts of you as if mental anguish
depended on progress or as if there were progress in the counter
balance of sorrow's detail lost in the rapid intensity of its repetition

*

accounts of you         his and her accounts

3.

The air came down like rice. It scattered through unevenness and
uneventfulness.

*

came down      unevenness 

4.

The air came down in its teacup shape of Japanese porcelain, light
dropping through it with disturbing regularity like dry rice falling through
water as if a dream state had collaborated with the concept of "grains of
rice," her observing it at just that moment when she imagined there might
be something inherent in the weave of the curtains, that some bit of drawn
thread, if pulled back, would fold up beneath a lens coming into focus.
Still the air remained full of scatterings, condensed, not exactly floating
nor promising something like the real snow she remembered as if it still
existed - morning light caught between glass slides about to be positioned
beneath a lens - grey but not heavy and less depressing because of the
movement of falling

*

not exactly, beneath

5.

One felt a lift of hope beyond the opposite building's surface attached to
a resin of deep amber, its sticky powder clinging to your fingers as you
prepared the lengths of white horsehair attached at each end of the bow,
lifting it above the stringed instrument, in this case a violin, to pull against
two consonants and two vowels, their pitch - where was it? - attainable in
the private ear

*

consonants      pitch - where was it? 

6.

Learning to come as close as possible for two people lodged in separate
bodies to move away but without rancor re-enacting the pleasure of
breaking down their separateness, as if there were a final psychological
position to grasp, to save oneself from the other's idea of acoustic garden
hose decor, stainless steel kitchen nests & implements, glass tulips held
aloft on wrought iron stems against nightfog, emergency blink, the
hovering of certain stars you'd both remembered seeing and were
counting on

*

nests & implements held aloft