from *a day in the life of p.* by kari edwards
(subpress collective 2002)

[the following quotations will not do justice to
this unusually original and moving work, they are just
a taste of the strange beauty of its language]

[note: asterisks indicate bold type]

"*may the birds proclaim unclean sympathetic
vibration for the sirens of the night
may the bugs and worms find a station that brings
direct service to the distant ones
may I not stop before death or a photo copy of death.
may the books on the shleves preserve a hearty dust
collection.
may phantasmic abundance accrue with a psychosis
twinge.
may the objects too numerous to mention cease to
cause consternation-cease to talk back
in their continual banter-cease to swallow the
heads of their previous owners.
may the street waiters in soiled clothes and may the
floating paper winds find a score suitable to
relinquish self serving components.*" (p.7)

neither the nearly fathered father nor the nearly mothered
mother know what that meant nor cared, and when to respond,
that no one person could ever change the traffic patterns alone, and
it's best to stick to job assignments and registered duties for the best
of the community, than to contramand the command. whatever
mentioned the new comer to the block who, by the way was
recently crucified and the nearly parents said-

yea...wellmmm that's different.

still, whatever believed in the possibilities of single pebble
ripple effects, and knew if only the icarus dream hadn't been abated,
surely, icarus would have gone down in history as more than a
mythical failure. this usually caused someone to *spend hours
listening to the silver backing found on old coins*, saying- we are
kin left with nothing but the sounds of bad musicals found in *turbine
engines* and artificial vintage products for the masses." (49)


"*on these days*, sometimes would create a language of the day-
relabeling minute particles- summoning the flesh to remember
when it was called into being, not the usual dictionalized image, but
the moment when an object takes on a life of its own, when
windows became magnificent turner paintings, awash in sudden swells
of fire, smoke and the billowing clouds of a burning london. when
the shrubs on the outside trimmed to anal perfection longed for
freedom in a dialectic known only in forest dreams, when the
crevices of the room eclipsed the moon and the sun- when space
would expand the depth of the floor into a deep abyss- as viruses
all sustained the same energy- freeing themselves from the form
known as birth scream recognition- where the self was set free by
multiplication tables, where diagrams of thought flowed in all
directions, leaving no direction at all." (p.50)