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03.10.10
From Sign of Order in the Universe
Halo with Bolt through it (creates slants of current, alters behavioral traits)


 



In the overture a finch caresses a watermelon with its beak. It is a large watermelon and the bird is very small. You are reminded of several images but one or another stands out. In the space where the oboe hesitates under the press of strings a mistress rubs ointment into her throat, or perhaps it is blood from the blood vial. Many dots coalesce and crawl together or make very small holes in space.


 



Heart Myth Surrounded by Wires (conducts amplitude, reverses course) 


 


A gene that out-skinnied. To put the skinny gene or the fat one by the head against the counter and blow its atoms out, but stuff twists and turns including atoms. When there is a passing there is a greater realization blowing from the self or an absence of that realization, and my children grow long and thin or stout and fat in the limbs, and the wildlife in the photographs no longer imparts that special feeling.


 



Cavity Resonator (resonating chamber, generates oscillation for waves) 


 


Is going in circles, is the indifferent beyond, is seems of air is made of sharks and the terms of thinking about the air have changed. Only the head, which is held limply on the winch, will lose its name and the belongings that hold it together mere illnesses, the solvents for the illnesses mostly spitten upon by things that have escaped the sharks, though my wolves are lonely in their circling, and hapless in their search for good spots.
      To explore the vacancies is good. So there is moratorium on space, and the capsules are full of potential grace, though when we try to pry open them they grow tighter, like endless sleet. 
      Sometimes she allows things in, when gears hold fast.


 



Galvanometer (detects and measures current) 


 


It was something that took hold, that allowed those kinds of things to happen. That she went upstairs and disappeared for a time with men friends leaving me downstairs with women friends, though I could not go through with what was hinted at, the room was large and moonlike, I was not capable of wisdom. There was a change that gripped hold of her system during certain situations or events, though a situation is distinct from an event it would seem, and the levels of fluid in the cans were all variable and made for surprise.


 



 


Thyristor (receives and conducts; controls application of power to a load) 


Which way were the tumblers, they were tumbling, their positions were as found in art porn or just porn or art. A personal computer. Machinery/  Can do but a building made of plants might one winter night sag into another building.

Is there a general liking someone without opinions that range. If he says I like your manuscript and she says I don’t like yours is that a problem to you, and if not then how far does the tunnel in the shape of a conquering dove bring down the banisters on which the tiny children ride.


 



Thyristor (2) 


A figure has flipped into another figure. Two tomahawks whiz by one another in a gentleman’s duel. Who the victor is depends on the prospective of the viewer. It is an insurrection, the settlers disintegrate to madness. I was there once. Thinking about buying something sexy for her. It did not happen, there were nerves and charges happening left and right, exciting burdens I wished we could carry but could not, and we met in places at odd times, so much it seemed we were in love.


 



Thyristor (3) 


He went to the bathroom holding a large tooth. The wood in there was very fine and well sanded and not like his knotty and craggy wood on which tin cans and broken wind chimes hung from old nails. He threw down the tooth because it was Easter, and Easter glows and cares for wood. He opened up the prayer that lisped from Maude’s hip and put his mouth up to it and said O. The yellow oxpicker left her teat with a sad ring of little pecks.


 



Thyristor (4) 


It has something to do with the tree arching above them, massive, just sprung, The way that some people have stun factor, flip your heart through its motions. And what happens on certain ships: sharks ripped of their fins and thrown back, still living, to sink like spectral stones. The shoes of a thousand ghosts. Toothcombs. The way one, in the subway, car, or tram, may just look. The way a kicked bucket always comes. I was in the field, searching for hints of my son.


 



Reactor (introduces reactance into circuit; opposes current) 


 


The razor and the razor’s guts strew across the wormwood. The distant blip no longer answers the questions. Tabitha and Rodney eat shortcake in a boulder field full of rattlesnakes, and the contractors circle the outskirts with cell phones glued to their ears, like large crustaceans sucking the meat from their tubes. There are large, empty circles where nothing gets done though people throng the edges and attempt to fix it. A ruminant has made a hollow in the trunk of a pine tree, loaded it with dynamite, and ignited it so that the great and noble organism explodes; fiery, thrashing arcs that litter the white plain with woe. 

James Grinwis has work published in 20x20, Black Warrior Review, and New American Writing. He is a founding editor of Bateau Press and lives in Florence, Massachusetts.