Intro
This is a quiet book
with shaking words—
a quivering finger
pressed to lips.
This story lies in the spaces
between a newly compounded word—
a silent space
of white walls and grass.
We forget that our story
is bound in the child’s eye—
a life insisted on by
pure and hushed discovery
and a wicked underbelly of dirt.
I.
Simon is no less than a figment of our imagination
An invisible arm.
We imagine him singing because it is
Pleasanter than his cut out tongue.
Simon says nothing but
He tells us it is why he
Not like apples—
The worms.
Earthworms eat dirt
Silkworms spin souls
Appleworms give Simon the wiggins.
Simon we say all creatures is alright.
Non. He shakes his head persistently.
Non.
Pause.
Perhaps.
II.
Today Simon found a mermaid.
He gives us a scale we say it’s a fishes
He gives us a hairs we say thread
He gives us a shell we say pooey clams spit
He stamps and throws fists and steams.
We go a looking for the nudie mermaid.
III.
Simon asked if we are
a family.
We say perhaps.
IV.
Simon asked why bodies drive with heat
We look and holds him
To bring us closer
V.
there be green and brown and empty space
Simon is imagining grasses from bottom to top
Like an ant looks towards tips
All he is seeing is a world of grasses and skies
Looks, us
Tell me what is wrong he asks
He searches us canyoned eyes
Guesses him not find the answer
Tell me
Up us, straddles a pile of bones
Elephant tomb, horseback
Kicks with stirruped feet
heels and waves yeehaw giddyup
He is imagining
He fills
we hollow
We hollowly tear at the grass.
VI.
Simon is covering ears:
IT IS TOO LOUD. S.
Yes yes but without them quotes books is silent.
Secretly: in your head they reads as whispers.
He drops the covers
and kisses a finger shh
VII.
We watch as Simon watches the sand.
He siphons a single grain on his tip and looks
Yes and humanity is etched upon it we say
We ladle the sand in our main
We want this to be humanity while weighing it in the hand
We mechanically break our fingers like water the sand slips
We let it
and the grains explode when they land on the ebbing wave some up some out
They sift like debris after the explosion
Humanity is just a try to not go under
we remember saying it proudly
Simon brushes the dry sand off his knees
A fish is heard swimming.
VIII.
What to say about Simon?
We try to say quiet wickedness
We say,
sweet.
like strawberries.
Kindergarten is full of strawberries.
IX.
Simon is rattling like a penny on a train track
His body shakes by the word
Something is cold and electric inside him
On an I-beam he stares down a rushing freedom
And a life of mornings.
XI.
Simon says he is in love
This is how he says it:
I AM IN LOVE. S.
We ask with who?
GREEN. S.
Our eyes meet:
I HEAR THE GRASS GROWING.
S.
XII.
Turning across
Simon raises him head and hands
Sungrazed chin dirt bumped knees, the horizon
Beneath we hear the metallicness of it all.
It wasn’t a fall per se but a magnet of praise
XIII.
Simon is always forgetting the difference
Between teeth and scars
XIV.
PERHAPS I AM INTERESTED IN FRAGMENTS. S.
We say where you learn teh talk like that boy.
XV.
who believes in souls and characters?
and characters with souls?
I’ve looked and seen
both
bathing in a drawn eye
and in your eye
(us three, we three)
Simon, and me,
and you
three parts to one ratio
clunking like wood
rattling fingers with pens
I’ve found you both
I’ve found you both.
XVI.
God we remember and it shows
Breaths caught in clamped faces
Simon knocks on our head
Asking us.
The memory is tasting like rice.
Simon is wrapped by the guitar
His faces noting brightness
And the chords warm us cheekses
Like sundropped petals in raise
We’re the lonely face that looks away
From the music
To the past while
Simon is warming on.
XVII.
Dem eyes playing guitar
Pluck and raise Simon’s strings
Us, and we are noted
and rising forward
Them notes sound
of southern roses
Tune us
Prune us
us is blooming
by Alexandra Axel
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