carbon copy....by: L.J. Moore

I like to think my inklings of knowing are just that:
tiny smudges, half-formed stains, curves and edges
applied to a portable emptiness;
like your figure approaching from the vanishing point
of the dusk, or the train tracks, or the photo album;
because an inkling is a child of the full word
and allows for growth and twisting, for character-building─
I like to put my tongue in the cheek of this page,
as delicate as a squid writing fear in the waves,
the evidence of meaning left behind, the thing itself escaped;
when a scratch in the dirt with a stick
was taken to mean
and from there to hog bristle, charcoal, stylus;
the mouth of the mind wet against the eyes─
how the writing voice differs from the speaking voice,
how your figure distorts and dissolves these days
to a vertical plane of liquid crystal: an abstraction I cannot follow
unless I vibrate right out of my eyes into a literal life-after.