Jaywalking the Is: “First Dream” [Excerpt]

To say sleep works by accumulation is to disregard the
weather in my head.

It makes a genius of the pillow, an apt anthropomorphic
redundancy.

When the story stumbles into its fearless costume &
everyone at the edge of the woods is worried their waiting-
room bravado won’t open to anything but the same door on
the same house that seemed a little off in the morning,
every anecdote has an empty object.

When your own name’s written on the gate, negation is just
something we do.

What’s redundant about the human personal? The urge to cull
an animal pronoun from a procession of wedding guests?

At least reductive absolutes rivet you somewhere closer to
the actual rainfall, adjudicating ultimatums or handling
the ounce of mulch it takes to cover any experience worth
calling tactile.

There’s nothing sharp about a knife in a movie.

& doesn’t it make you fearless & brave to say so.