The screen is a shield, like this one.
But it doesn't have to be.
"Dear S, a screen as a shield but also a veil.
It's sheer and can be shorn.
There's a neat gap between these covers, a gate, a gape,
through which you've slipped your tang.
Paper cuts to swordsmith--
let's name this pagan pageant, these rows of lines or vines
that link us together."
And of course, these rows of lines or vines
are the lines of poetry, affixed to the page, which
as Cecilia Vicuna reminded us last night,
comes from a Greek word that means trellis.
And of course, trellising also came up in Danielle's talk.
The trellis is the surface to which lines of writing
are fixed.
This poem owes a great debt to Emmett Williams,
whose wonderful book "Sweethearts"
is on exhibit in the exhibition that Joanna Drucker put
together.
He was an expert of communicative anagrams.
I highly recommend checking out "Sweethearts" if you can.
"Page, don't cage me.
Why this mania to name what's between us?
That way is carnage, carnal, carnival.
We share texts, fleshy network, your trellis, and my tendency
to excoriate your fang and my carnations we like leather.
You have Ivy.
I'm a bouquet of charnel carnations, carrion incarnate.
Don't shoot the courier, Ace.
Your cute awry, S"
So just as a page or just as a screen can be sheer,
can be inviting and its shine can draw us toward it.
Page also has a violent side because it's
a point of connection.
It also gives us bang.
It also has this somewhat violent underpinning.
And in addition, a screen comes from a root
that gives us the making of text into flesh, charnal carnations,
carrion incarnate, all of these words come from that same root
as does charcuterie because, of course, the slicing
and dicing of the flesh is done with a shining object.
This poem is composed of anagrams
of the word charcuterie I'll read just the first couple
of lines.
"Circa the rue, accrue, their creature, chi, each recruit,
a heretic cur, a chic ureter.
Archer, cutie, a cute richer curio etcher.
Airy crush catcher I rue, coche ire rut, racier chute,
accrue her it, cacti hue err, ace their cur.
Dear S, that trellis is a metaphor.
It props me up.
I propagate agate pages, a paper argot wrapped tropes.
Be my apport?
What are boundaries anyway?
P.
Dear P, we're running out of words.
So I'll be Kurt, Hershel, and curtail my tail.
Your core, a sure, sight.
I regret the fight.
Don't forget to write.
S. P.S. A co-script, posthaste, postface.
There is no postscript.
Sleep tight."
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]