Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/white-and-black-ampersand-printed-mug-floating-above-brown-wooden-table-CEKDuFKVvPQ) 12. 10. 2024.
Donald Antrim, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World
“Duck!”… From the skies it came, a gargantuan blue tome, one of those Compact Editions of the Oxford English Dictionary, end over end hurtling in projectile descent, pages fluttering and tearing in the wind, a screaming index of printed and bound lexical data, half a language heavy with gravity and gathering velocity. I dove for turf and covered my head as the OED cruised thumping to the earth.
Hurtling screaming index
d’ lexical data
Each ’tum point
inside da’ words
Torque you round
shift yr ground
Ring tha’ blank space
Be you’m 27th letter*
Google say two plus seven
we’s buzzing on
Cloud Nine
Say “Duck!” Sniper shots
cross street, Sara day-glo
heavy gravity for sure
*“The new sentence is a decidedly contextual object. Its effects occur as much between, as within, sentences. Thus it reveals that the blank space, between words or sentences, is much more than the 27th letter of the alphabet. It is beginning to explore and articulate just what those hidden capacities might be.” (Silliman, The New Sentence, p. 92)
About the Author: Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 26 books in print (from BlazeVOX, Chax, Spuyten Duyvil, & others). His personal papers are archived in the “Contemporary Literature Collection” at Simon Fraser University. His website is StephenBett.com
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