Fault Whispers
By Mark Tardi
“A skeleton’s mouth makes few concessions to prettiness.”
—Jacques Joubert
Because your mouth is violet and you cannot speak
Because maybe I like Thursdays the way I used to hate baths, and
baths are boundaries whose sharpness will be blurred with more information
Because movement itself is a form of currency
Frozen in articulations
Because don’t indulge yourself in the idea of restraint
The blackened patches could have been pubic hair on dead bodies, or simply
the wildness of neglect
without horizons or spaces
Because it’s a comfort to know waste is the fuel of contradictions
a knife rusted before its first use
Because in the barest of rooms, nothing is comprehensible
Neither fanatic nor mystic
Because the first weeks of September came and went and the weather held
Not woven by innocent hands
Because this stasis is preparation
Because you’re deceased, maimed or in Philadelphia
