Switched-on Gutenberg Issue 16
Assemblage
Inference
Effort #1

Imagine the silver gloved hand pulsing sound with inverted red cloth palm rushing harmonics.
 
Imagine the vertical cylinder mid air off the edge of the bed, dangling. Long lank leg against white lace as wine entwined toes chime brightly in solace after wind spinning during the last dance.
 
I refuse to close the book to pixilations, with each minute frequency honing into decibels, page after page.
 
Dry air breezes against glove thrumming a low tone. Leafed air cools the instep arched to fleeting velvet admonitions, a fallen shoe, tone upon tone, high pitched, hollow.
 
Thin limbs hold music as if pages could open branch by branch to hasten from page to page, to limb to leg to shoe above the resting glove. Round words unwind to paper the air with a lingering murmur, dissipating in the forest of space.
 

Effort #2
 
The glove, the shoe, the book. No foot inside the shoe. No hand inside the glove. No fingers to sound an echo in the wind of page turning page, toe upon carpet, leg resting on lace. The book opens in a forest of chimes, where pages are quiet without air to breeze, to breathe harmonics into chiming stillness. All that is concrete lingers far longer than sound that falls in decibels upon silver cylinders of space.
 

Effort #3
 
Quiet glove. Empty shoe. No pages turning in the chiming forest.
 


Copyright 2010,  Mary Ellen Talley

Mary Ellen Talley is a poet and a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in the Seattle School District.  Her poems have appeared in Penwood ReviewBellowing Arkpoemmemoirstory,  Ballard Street PoetryBetween the Lines and are forthcoming in Cascade.



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