NICOLE BURROWS

Ode

to Anselm Berrigan

Here is the Most Lurid Tale Ever Hidden in the Form of One Very Long
Syllogism

Certain things are given. This does not give things certainty, or the right of one to write so. Just certainly. Sure as I made the idiot, "I am" and "I ate." I am frightened by my own thinking because I once thought, could own thinking. Wouldn't it be tidier to trip over a wire of one's own creation, rather than recreate the immediate couches of someone else's vicinity, which boon a longed for niceness for the tame sex favors tag provides during escapes with exquisitely and oppositely sexed neighbors of childhood? "Oh it's good," (oh is the shortest way to shriek desperation cheerfully) "to be it!" But to be always among those chasing it? Doesn't quite reek of a correct flavor, say spearmint or grape. And it isn't often smelled until much later when one is counted by the census as being alive, yet not enough to enjoy the perks (fucking oneself happily to the sounds of waking up, over and over again, call it a theme if you want to) of gradual dying. As a cat stops at the reflection of a woman eating sardines and oranges over the sink in slippers and curlers purrs, the burglar of same name who wishes to unravel her hair just stands there translating the noise of his throat to the aching of not being able to say, "I wish to rape you, but I'm not sure you'll let me." How can he sentimentalize what is still happening when all he hears is gurgling? That's me in the middle of myself thinking about the inaccuracy of referring to things except as things blurrily. For example, cats and burglars. Everyday one of the two eats, tortures and maims a smaller, though different, creature, as the other is currently taking things from either a smaller, larger, or exact-sized, though same-typed, vertebrate. Both are exact in their committing of acts inconsequentially, making your grieving for absence, theirs and yours, the most brutal exercise of futility, the drape pulled back to reveal nothing especially worth concealing. In your case it wasn't a brick building. Don't despair. All raids have been planned before hand. Will this save you? Depends. This is one of those times where it's easier to be on the outside. You do the defining. Inside, you are the thing that your things define. Now which would you rather be trapped by? The actual cat, or the thief who claims to stealthily eat rats? I think I am saying. There is almost something being able to, to sensate. O and then K. Who knows all the verbs I once knew? I, yes, have eaten glue in order to understand what it is like to adhere to paper like type. It's a matter of taste, and it can be bad when it occurs to one that what they're tasting actually has none. And what can that man in the window, who really ought to wear clothes, do, when he can only do so badly, especially when she, eating sardines and oranges across the street, says he has no taste, not even a bad one? He says she ate fish of varying shapes and round color. He didn't specify why. Just proved her silently as one would a quadrangle, her long weird leg, and within it, the vein. Throbbing for him. One imposition of a large enough outline on a page to form size and they become apple and the apple in bites. See, there's his awe. See, there's her face. And us, in the middle, we're going "wait."