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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