Linda Black

The Reading

A plastic chair—take me, rest your feet
—a broken bench. (She arranges the seating.)

She can't read (tries to) what is
unwritten, no longer words, not even

between the lines. All the elements are there
—like floaters in the eye, hard

to pin down. Stay still while I make you out.
Small hills rise and fall. Ah!—a road, a lane

narrowing, tumbledown; a gatepost, a vestibule—almost
a way in. This one curves negligently, its little tail

probing. (She used to know what that meant.)
What is it like to lose a mind—or never to know

it is missing? A route map of liquid thought—before
thought coheres, congeals; a tongue thick

with mystification. Think—round the edges,
over the top (of spectacles?), right to left,

laterally. Diagonalise. (How a word search
can catch you out.) All that is sat upon

rises to the surface. Be reassured.
On this day (of mists and mildews) the path

begins benignly. The trick
is to know it's there. Verily it is.

The audience faces away—she is speaking
to the backs of heads . . .

Transcribe, transliterate. A version
writes itself—pictographic, historiated. Follow

with your finger—as you go along
invent the words.

 

 

 

Copyright © Linda Black, 2007.

Linda Black is an artist and poet who lives in London. She won the 2006 New Writing Ventures Poetry Award, and has a pamphlet titled the beating of wings (Hearing Eye, London, 2006). Her first full collection, Inventory was published by Shearsman Books in 2008.