Figure

Eric Linsker

 

 

 

Then [the object] as retreat

 

among ten or twelve yards

 

my hands  heavy     [lift]

 

Shadow positing the thing

 

as a way of stopping [use]

 

Will I mean for?

 

I think of “before it can happen”

 

delay in the newspapers

 

             covering over her body]

 

you know the big blue and white buildings [gray and white]

 

in front of myself

 

 

 

 

Open mouth without scream

 

The men return

 

        with sacks    [over their shoulders]

 

[“I can feel the tablecloth”]

 

      [before it can happen]

The scene quiet as I leave it

 

[and they became one person]

 

 

 

 

This in the act of emerging –

 

accounts for the blurred – grass.

 

Being fired at [seven] times. The grass

 

in the act of emerging,

 

already from ten or twelve yards,

 

right among us, the being fired at, already there.

 

Then “grass” already there. Nothing

 

new is [happening]. What I

 

can’t say about the bullet, the grass

 

silvering as it’s posited

 

       [there are sides]

 

[burgeoning] [back down]

 

 

 

 

Photography becomes social because we can’t kill anything

 

Also not seeing herself also showing her the photograph

 

            You see, she’s moving back

[then the – still – being left] [we see or we know by then]

 

to feel myself rising but I want to feel – the other going down – I cannot feel down for the other. I

 

cannot feel “observe” for the other

 

I can only observe the other [it used to be] – I would have to begin

 

as the object. What I “know” comes in and shuts

 

 

 

As we have to have – the beginning – of the line

 

[the plane in another language finding back]

 

What if I stood in a building

 

[between “disciplines”]

 

 

 

Up to now we’ve been talking about photographs which are in existence – [which you choose]

 

Now let’s talk about photographs which are not in existence

 

We will have to talk about all of them

 

[“this” as the only human interaction]

 

First there is the photograph

 

 

 

 

The bag of peas and potatoes falls flatly on the floor of the – lift

 

[but suddenly through a graph]

 

DS   You prefer to

 

FB   Totally alone. With their memory

 

 

 

Answers are made by finding back and changing the questions

 

[injury] But tell me who today has been able to record

 

anything that comes across – as a fact without causing [I meant]

 

to the image

 

 

if I had really thought about what causes somebody to scream,

 

what is it would come like

 

the water which is [already there]

 

 

Buoyancy: an open mouth may not be a scream

 

[“not”] [on the other side of] [limit]

 

The image of the human –

 

– the names for things –

 

there would not be centuries –

 

 

[stopping action?]

 

We throw something on

 

 

 

Now: which the other does not know

 

 

: and this constitutes the demarcation point

 

 

[what we call describing a technique]

 

[what we call nor to tell time]

 

[the voluntary] [one slick side]

 

from “now on” we saw a dorsal fin in the water. There was no time. In which that became

 

what we saw

 

say

 

A man but further off    [waving]

 

The side of sleep like a bell

 

 

 

 

Also people sitting on benches

 

a kind of caution

 

[the numbers being called

 

before they came up]

 

what they mean. And yet I don’t know what they mean. A strategy [but you can throw]

 

[now working beyond reason]

 

[now /wavers/]

 

[There’s a further step to that: the whole questioning

 

of what appearance is]

 

[I mean it comes about somehow one doesn’t know how]

[Somebody paints my room]

 

[reading the poem as]

 

[thinking about doing]

 

[like a street]

 

[the images would be naked figures, but not literal naked figures]

 

[“this” limit to my pain] [and the other side of the limit]

 

Because this is not a film, I cannot say what grass means

 

[I saw you from the hill in the park

 

and running, came into each word

 

            for the first time]

 

 

I write back

 

and if shadow has a subject

 

is unaware

 

for charity we have to posit action

 

described as the hawthorn

 

she comes up the walk

 

its opposite like a shadow

 

zip, [she] whispers zip