Realism: An Anthology of 'Language' Writing

Tom Mandel
WHAT YOU BORROWED FROM ME,
THAT'S WHAT I WANT BACK
Take the measure of a major crowd. I have inherited this
tense mood, shouting hi Janey, hi there Jimmy. Suddenly she
dissolves in tears, in time zero, the enemy of the people. They
depart this chosen hard-ass life budging toward us and then
alternatively and with a, not a confused smile, no, a patient
smile, or at least a willing one that may not know what's going on
or care, away from is it really us?-a parallel sluicing draining
eye serves as contact sideways into mutual overtly emotional
character identification with the ideas kicked around downstairs
in the family room. Envisioning an eternity along the banks of
the river True, or their lives turning completely done roasts in
evening wind that approaches through big trees, oak or nut
trees, a hardwood something lunar fractions vary, light of their
blue-green moonlight tops focussed to sometimes black tops
which seem a dead team exactly timed to reverse the week, and
silence would lean on it in excited activity of immediate depression,
friendly and well-developed, without-as in such a
mood-you can't take in this information sans self toppled from
its spot. But he wasn't using heavy-legged presence practice
seminars you don't anyway expect-note-regret intend or particularly
care to underline. The year he dies will be four times its
own length. Look out for the buzzily attractive black marks of
interruption bending back into specific context that skid along
the bottom, bump-thump of an eloquent handicap lyric to frustrated
sky, stripped colored segments shoved into the well, its
surface of cloud sawed off first, the hand that moves them
moves them aside until, looking back, he turns left, left, and rises
over the road stripe to enter the store, to enter the store, across
the street.
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