And this is from the second section
that I want to read from.
And right now it's called Straddling Unsuccessful Vault.
And all of these poems are actually
entitled Set Design Theory.
And I was sort of inspired by a quote by the poet Susan Howe.
And she said, "I would say that the most beautiful thing of all
is a page before the word interrupts it."
Set Design Theory.
Twelfth night.
This doll, this appears to mock the rock.
Painted tree in the folded scape.
Suggested mouth in the hills, still of the lips of David.
The planets.
Nomad Neptune, O, balloon of atmosphere.
The silver ring begat the ball.
Jupiter, O, the apple of Magritte, celestial lollipop.
Boom, the bang of monologue.
Madame Butterfly raised the heated foil.
Ancient gold curls to pose.
No geisha, as if I bit into the silver layered
upon the [? suite. ?] Listen, din in tin,
arrived, spoke, metal breath.
The ring cycle.
Glacier upon the stage, the ball rolls,
pose in the thin of glass.
Noise over ice.
Solo froze the stalactites.
Light looms.
The costume is a rest.
Set Design Theory.
This is her escape.
Sparse furniture where the lights gravitate.
The flood.
The installed arms in love.
I see symmetry in bodies.
The ocean divides the ocean.
Desire, alarm, the degree of dimension.
Width of the stage punctured.
The picture tree blows into the wooded tree.
Bark shed upon the set.
Crystal nature scenario ushers the dream.
Middle interrupted flat land clashing with skin
defied expectation.
Aria is the only left apparatus--
is Aria.
Dramaturge is confounded by the volatile compound.
As the thorn pricks middle finger, throne picks no emblem.
To quantify assigned numbers, forgotten eponym of area,
length times width times height.
Set Design Theory.
Geometric hardware.
Curtains lift to perceive.
The objects torque upon the platform.
Exposed nails, ropes, wings, cog teeth, available for inquiry.
Swept stage.
Tabula rasa.
Walls meet floor at a line.
The centered pulpit, a spot held.
A chair, we never imagined an inhabitant.
Dancing leg interject the first utterance.
Exit breath, the mute of a vacuum.
Set Design Theory.
What first came to mind, how a tree becomes a plank that long.
Deafening notion, music is to be heard.
Informed by the onset of blindness, pedagogy in senses.
In the absence of sight, smell of mold
on toast before the colors blue, green
began to permutate fractals on bread.
What I mean is this.
We learn to see, and see, and see.
Carry this notion into other realms.
Introduce the vibration before the noise.
Orchestra pit stings the planks beneath.
Shock of sound before its climactic incarnation
as sound in your seat flooding the pelvic.
Pause the ears as vats.
At the epicenter, as literal, the animals
as exclusive of ourselves, hear rumbles
and feel the awkward grate of fingernail.
Tintinnabula, middle English from Latin
tintinnabulum from tintinare to jingle,
re-duplication of tinere, to ring of imitative origin.
In emphasis, onomatopoetic.
Instincts felt imitative sounds.
The storm strikes the tree in the woods.
We are in the theater.
It falls.
Set Design Theory.
The artifice is spectacle.
Imaginary bricks stacked in sequence across the stage
divide right from left, upon a notion of locus
where the actors reside.
And the audience's eyes conveniently
gravitate to the middle, the cross-section of wall.
Our seats' privilege upfront aback.
The leading act's costume is made
of silver cloth and two zippers from the neckline to hemline,
on the front and on the back.
Two interlocking pieces of fabric.
The audience has not yet seen this.
Certain images become allegories, for fear
that the actors might enter the stage in the overused
metaphor of the millennium.
Or the leading act mutates into a dancer and leaps
over the imaginary wall.
It shatters, revealing the nonsense of heritage
without context or the unethical division between arts, selves.
Speculation on the event delays the event.
A blow torch begins a melted glowing light show,
diverts the crowd.
The leading act is afraid of the reality of her role.
She decides against the stage, reciting her lines
to the props.
The audience is restless, then appeased by the ethic
of costume that consumes them.
The audience wears hats, or they don't.
Ends the blue flame of the technician,
applause waxes and wanes.
A curtain pulled aside reveals the sun
filtered through a window pane.