you sit on the soft lip of the waiting-room chair :: the hue of the room spreads its bare ecology on the bodyness of your body :: the yellow wallness of the walls :: the ballet edgeness of the flowers arranged on the tableness of the grey :: the curlness of their pliant leaves :: the tulle tuilipness of the tuilips on the deskness of the reception desk :: the greenfields under the cloudness of a thundercloud on the framed print :: the glassness of its wheats mirror a colony of spheres searching for their queer plastic :: you are trying to count them all :: there a pink bubble soaking in her winter :: there a pink bubble his pink hands vanishing into the pocketness of his pockets :: there a pink blubble locked in the waitness of her wait :: they greet the eyeness of your eyes with the smileness of their smiles :: the light refractions focused as beams bridge the loveliness of anticipation :: only the madness of your cells are holding you together in the septicness of conditioned air :: is this spring? you wonder :: you are trying to love it all :: the sweet membrane of the room :: the numberness of its numbers :: the gorgeous winterness of spring :: the bubbleness hides the clarity of these definitions :: you cherish the nounness of the nouns :: you will never stop trying to find the renewal in the preciousness of the wait :: you will never stop trying to define it all
“when the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii dies by suicide, it releases compounds that help surviving cells grow faster.” —American Scientist
it is not so much you are exceptional but that you are suspended between life and death :: the self-destruction is almost neighbourly :: the light must immigrate to the centre of an eye :: even the alga understands its debt towards the devil’s whole :: when the investigator says we have a duty of care :: he means don’t forget :: but you say never again :: some sacrifices are salacious :: some have the scent of skunk cabbage :: a mouth stuffed with hair repeats its first communion :: you believe the cup is meant to be shared :: necrosis is simply an opportunity for salvation whenever the bread is broken :: when was the last time you broke bread with a neighbour? never mind :: now it is too late :: you have to close the door :: they are locked in grisly congress :: they hide behind their walls :: they swiftly build new cells :: look :: there is always something in front of you :: there is something we forgot
dear dr. Williams :: hypotrich conjugation [suctoria]
some sessile ciliates fuse at their mouths :: to share genetic material :: and sometimes one absorbs the other :: to multiple their animal :: until you can no longer see where memory and midnight curve in the middle :: although this one pair here :: you watch spin their improvisions in the fluid :: until their cytoplasmic bridge collapses :: and membanes grossly rupture :: slip their cherry organs into the wet together:: with such grace that it aluminises the light debt :: and you think :: how you wish you could shatter like that
Orchid Tierney is the author of this abattoir is a college. She teaches at Kenyon College and is a senior editor at the Kenyon Review. WEB
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