Ron Silliman

from NOW, HERE, THIS: HALF-SONNETS

for Terence Winch & Ivan Sokolov

IV

A Zoom screen with hundreds of squares filling an entire wall. A sharp pain not in my right thumb but in the nerves in my palm leading to it. My father at 19, holding me aloft. All the mirrors in Michael McClure’s house. Someone in the woods is singing.

Hieronymus botch, anonymous sox. All of Markson out of print. A blocked punt on the hunt.

A light in the closet outlines its door. A discussion I was having in a dream, gone to me now. Another sentence begun with the letter A. As in ah, awe. The tiniest white hair atop the black laptop. This poem in the form of a lap. That’s apt.

Inept. Crept up on one. Hence a trick: the line is thick. A second rhyme starts the climb.

First flight at dawn: then you are gone. Who wakes when. An extra blanket encourages dreams, or perhaps just the memory.

Celebrity childhood. Jason Statham or Liam Nelson in a black suit by the glass door to the garden. The sadness of Bruce Willis. The film is just a chase scene with dialog. A long cord to the headset. Young Amish women playing baseball in long dresses.

Snow at dawn: which side is the lawn? A literature of wholeness, a hoot at the ‘tute. All the Haverford grads working at Cantor Fitzgerald in 2 double-ought one. Capital trumps capitol. Joe Manchin likes the attention.