Christine Scanlon

 

 

Witness the Taste for Verbal Continuity

A lurching witness is frozen. His tongue too. The concrete lacks taste and the elements of understanding are continually unkind. Knowing is to witness a prayer, a verbalized beginning whose words we turn to in matters of taste. Like salt it is a real taste continuing to preserve a glimpse of the cured past until we are drowning in verbs that reside in the discontinuity of limbs learning to limp before crawl. Small tastes continue because largess only wilts a speakers' tone. I am calling on the fresh stream that trips newly beaded.

 

 

 

In Reason's Ear They All Rejoice

A Cento

 

Between them is the land of broken colors,

Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator

 

With her, &c.

 

Let crackling twigs of white light weave fantastic

Worth beneath a threadbare cover

 

Lips own love; did I say once: 'I love'?

I was not so stupid.

 

She took and gave language just as she needed

One girl in a red dress leaves the shopping mall with

Show folks fire-eating;