from o n e

 
 

I: one 
II: one 
III: one 
V: one 
X: one 
XI: one 
XIV: one 
XX: one 
Note 


I: one
 
 
 
Talk
about the
cave again
one /
every
surface
is provoked /

Weather
is / one
is trying and
does not
happen.

One
voice
is scared of buildings.
One
pain
can be lonely /
             or at death / body
             one becomes the /
brightest place
on earth.
             One
admires color / the
failure in geography.

Ship and one.
Share border
one.

For you. January burns in small rooms. One. What rage of ash.
Eating
sparks off a wet earth. Cloud. One sick.

With the elevation
moves the body. I repeated out.
One does expand so terribly much.
Plus I’m bored.
I wish you were a horrific drunk. One. Consuming periphery.

Failure is in our geographies being finished. One. Geography.

One. I am making an instrument of little bones. Makes liquor.
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

II: one
 
 
 
These tier
their own
/ defacings

from whom
one /
as from

The absolute
features are / every
single use
many / each

many
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

III: one
 
 
 
What then is

apology / one
is /
undivided
even to one

/
very
hurriedly

one departs

forward into many

Those often very
different
are
the way they /
are
same
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

V: one
 
 
 
You must forget one.

“I, says the buzzard, / I–…” / Oppen

You talk to one

at thousand faces / strand

from it / you will say

one you say one shifts
its fronts, shows it shut

one
upsets the other /
more if
or
one is there
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

X: one
 
 
 
Stood in

addresses one columns /

bell in the high plants / bell

inside people hearts /

met being physical

one,

a sketched way

patterned off

/ the island one

part one / part

one / hands

in /

to whatever isolation from /

arrow from

stacks of my own shade
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

XI: one
 
 
 
Here is the event of one

how no unisons were

pierced
any

of
the drag / On

limbs one

lake shy
impenetrable seen one from being wholed, part of
collapse down or in / aperture, part minister folds
inside, obscurities, indexed apart, happens to be /

these do not vague across

each other they exit

mere
one /
the
way sum mere

unshared unison
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

XIV: one
 
 
 
“To you, my center of gravity oscillates
in the [     ] between one I and another.
I am listening
to the text made by the mineral
syllables of these languages. I
work into the {     }. I practice it.” / Karla kelsey

Tilted
none shapes
passing over
to many
flooded onto
exterior /

This other part
pore
taken squall

everybody is fluent with

menace of scaffolded us

one
             thrown rocks

             against a weed

             to away thrill hierarchies

             they want shared              reveal the manner
             in which your face came to appear as
             it now does

             completed /

             what so now
             leans through

             finish be / what
/ past
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

XX: one
 
 
 
One
was    first
             any
             /
one is
quell one
tears the cloud
away helms
breath
out /

context dwindles

to exclude one /
is

             thing, nightless,

             histories you one with,
             histories were
             that is / with
             one inside “whose
             histories am I one of”

part in lack of rests, part is
weight / is under things / no
one or
nothing

is more, indicator of, from,
origin with tensive straights
without commentary all zeal,
jag

mouth’s un-
             word
 

 

top
 
 
 
 
 

Note
 
 
“o n e” is to interact with the sociological assumptions the pronoun placed into our immediate dealings with each other (as enforcer of norms, tradition, gender, class…), and how the pronoun reifies a set of internal images as well. “o n e” attempts to be, to happen to be a sociolinguistic event. Then the project became engaged with the notions, secular and sacred, of non-dualism (if, how, and why the ‘I’ is apart from thou’), or Advaita Vedanta, in some eastern religions. Ideas of community, solipsism, nationalism, psychological monologue foreground “o n e” as well.

 
Matthew Johnstone is the author of Let’s be close Rope to mast, you Old light (Blue & Yellow Dog Press). More writing can be found in So and So, Cricket Online Review, Horse Less Review, and Likewise Folio. He is half of the creative stewardship for the arts journal ‘Pider, out of Tennessee, Nashville, America.
 
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