Sandwiched between the dry is the red, the blood in the green and the yellow, mound and pound and slab of ground, blackened and bloodied both if it’s done right, the layers different only before, molded into a singular unit by the act of consumption, the model of diversity as homogeneity, consumption as the king of identity
I don’t know why she volunteered to be a figure model, standing naked in front of strangers as they tried to capture her essence in a few dark lines. Maybe she wanted to be admired. Maybe she wanted to discover who she was. Maybe she was teaching me a lesson.
She turned profile, running her hands over her stomach and gazing in the mirror. She stood up straighter. She sucked in her gut. Yeah, this was going to be awful. She felt lumbering, unwieldy in her body. There was no comfortable position to take.
the figure in the shadows, like a shadow itself. flickering in the lamplight. it seemed to fade in and out of reality like a phantom. perhaps it was a phantom. a ghost. a figment of your imagination. your delusion.
i figure your figure cuts a pretty fine figure
i can’t figure out why i feel so sad
when your body floats over me
curves and contours seem alright
but maybe that contentment
was contemptuous
and all i ever wanted was a smiling face
to warn me
of future figures to figure the future
the figure 8 slumped over itself. “Try again,” barked the teacher as the students tittered. He hushed them with one glare from under his too-bushy eyebrows. The girl tried writing lower on the board this time and made a reasonable figure 8 this time. Everyone looked disappointed to not be able to laugh at her again.
She drapes across the earth in crimson curves, her glow illuminating the alleys and gardens and barely-more-than-puddles ponds that pockmark its surface. She sighs, and the grounds splits. She laughs, and the sky shakes, raining drops of golden amber.
There’s a British game show where the host’s lovely assistant chooses five different numbers between 1-100, then randomly generates a number between 100-500. The panelists use each of the five numbers once – adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing with the others – to try and get as close to the target number as possible.
Sometimes its possible.
Sometimes it’s just one or two away from the target, and impossible to figure.
Something is missing in all of this. I can’t see things as they are, or maybe I do and I am disappointed. Things are rarely easy to figure out but that is what makes life life. The trouble. If it all went as we expected it would simply be a slow death.
Jigsaw cracks on the silhouette, inviting gaps in the frame; piece it together to complete the statue, to build from thought to action, vagary to concrete. Mold the joints if you have to, massage the edges, cut the figure from whole cloth if need be, to ensure your mind’s eye matches what catches the rays of the sun
“THIS!” He angrily thrust his essay in my face. The red pen stood out like an angry sneer, the letters legible and clear as it presented his failing grade. “What does this mean?”
I blinked at him. The fingers twitched on my right hand; I felt them do so. “What does an F mean?”
“YES!”
I gaped at him. “How long have you been in school? Figure it out.”
Theresa stopped. There was a figure on the side of the road, hunched and small. It was too small to be a person, or even a child, and as she crept closer she could hear it whimper.
It was a fox kit, she realized, as she made her way closer. She’d never seen one in person.
I already did “figure” oneword, come on
OK “hamburger”
Sandwiched between the dry is the red, the blood in the green and the yellow, mound and pound and slab of ground, blackened and bloodied both if it’s done right, the layers different only before, molded into a singular unit by the act of consumption, the model of diversity as homogeneity, consumption as the king of identity
I don’t know why she volunteered to be a figure model, standing naked in front of strangers as they tried to capture her essence in a few dark lines. Maybe she wanted to be admired. Maybe she wanted to discover who she was. Maybe she was teaching me a lesson.
She turned profile, running her hands over her stomach and gazing in the mirror. She stood up straighter. She sucked in her gut. Yeah, this was going to be awful. She felt lumbering, unwieldy in her body. There was no comfortable position to take.
the figure in the shadows, like a shadow itself. flickering in the lamplight. it seemed to fade in and out of reality like a phantom. perhaps it was a phantom. a ghost. a figment of your imagination. your delusion.
figure is something that you can’t see very well. its like a dark shape the you can’t see clearly.
i figure your figure cuts a pretty fine figure
i can’t figure out why i feel so sad
when your body floats over me
curves and contours seem alright
but maybe that contentment
was contemptuous
and all i ever wanted was a smiling face
to warn me
of future figures to figure the future
the figure 8 slumped over itself. “Try again,” barked the teacher as the students tittered. He hushed them with one glare from under his too-bushy eyebrows. The girl tried writing lower on the board this time and made a reasonable figure 8 this time. Everyone looked disappointed to not be able to laugh at her again.
She drapes across the earth in crimson curves, her glow illuminating the alleys and gardens and barely-more-than-puddles ponds that pockmark its surface. She sighs, and the grounds splits. She laughs, and the sky shakes, raining drops of golden amber.
Day 4
There’s a British game show where the host’s lovely assistant chooses five different numbers between 1-100, then randomly generates a number between 100-500. The panelists use each of the five numbers once – adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing with the others – to try and get as close to the target number as possible.
Sometimes its possible.
Sometimes it’s just one or two away from the target, and impossible to figure.
Something is missing in all of this. I can’t see things as they are, or maybe I do and I am disappointed. Things are rarely easy to figure out but that is what makes life life. The trouble. If it all went as we expected it would simply be a slow death.
Jigsaw cracks on the silhouette, inviting gaps in the frame; piece it together to complete the statue, to build from thought to action, vagary to concrete. Mold the joints if you have to, massage the edges, cut the figure from whole cloth if need be, to ensure your mind’s eye matches what catches the rays of the sun
“What does this mean?”
“What?”
“What the Hell does this mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“THIS!” He angrily thrust his essay in my face. The red pen stood out like an angry sneer, the letters legible and clear as it presented his failing grade. “What does this mean?”
I blinked at him. The fingers twitched on my right hand; I felt them do so. “What does an F mean?”
“YES!”
I gaped at him. “How long have you been in school? Figure it out.”
Theresa stopped. There was a figure on the side of the road, hunched and small. It was too small to be a person, or even a child, and as she crept closer she could hear it whimper.
It was a fox kit, she realized, as she made her way closer. She’d never seen one in person.