from Story*
Jennifer Firestone
It doesn’t really matter as this is bound as fact.
“Laces the spine, tightly.”
Not fact per se, but a trajectory that is filed as such.
“Frame catches wave catches frame.”
He did say he was sorry when the seizure rapidly hit.
“Is that a phone, or hum?”
Solipsistic one’s story paging panting to tell.
“Morning time, before beach time, they walk.”
What a bastard this story spreading into the space.
“Before beach, a new couple shine.”
The story understands the couple can be moved freely, advanced.
“His hat over one eye, she a coin purse.”
There was a gray photo album with them smiling.
There was the photo of the man who sold fish.
There was the photo of her in a big hat.
There was the photo of the quaint bungalow.
There was a photo of fuchsia flowers.
There was a photo of beach people.
There was a photo of a shop.
There was a photo of a coconut.
There was a photo of the tide.
There was a photo of an animal.
There was a photo of a postcard.
When the body gesticulates as punctuation
“Half smile.”
When landscape is used as emotion.
“Blue on top of blue = depth.”
When language is structured to be excerpted.
“A cloud sinks into a white wave.”
Memory believes it is active and operates with control.
“Sand talk.”
Memory takes cues from the ego that desperately flails with its needs.
“Turn upside down, watch the sand drizzle.”
There are so many stories that any given day can be told.
“Bodies sat down and language delivers.”
* This work is in conversation with Leslie Scalapino’s that they were at the beach and tracks a “story” located at the beach that is both revealed and withheld. In many ways it’s an investigation of narration and memory. I have created my own form in the book—a twist on the couplet.
Jennifer Firestone is an Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at Eugene Lang College (The New School). Her books include Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books) and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). Firestone co-edited (with Dana Teen Lomax) Letters To Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books). She has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She won the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press Robert Creeley Memorial Prize. Firestone is a member of the Belladonna Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series.
