Randee Silv

Zero

There are not enough incidents of stopping. Knocking door after door is obscene. Restraint starts at the bottom and rises up if not ignored. I guess you could say it’s like living two contrasting levels of engagement, never parallel and always switching. Gaps forever prevalent. Wording trimmed too soon can be deleted more easily than redoing circuits of cascading autumn clouds. Pigeons coo. Owls hoot. She saw herself as a doorknob and retreated into her quietude to a location of being imperfect. Interruptions unwanted. Misunderstandings weren’t able to halt elongated lines from reaching the landfill. The electricity will return when the throbbing ends. Her hair is already white. Occurrences. Excerpts reduced and others prized. If she goes down the stairs, she has to come up. To see what has not yet happened could happen again. The ecstatic moment comes after the fact.

Efficiency

Never enough to reuse. Never enough dry blue tips or burnt ambers or peeled bark. Never enough words echoing on wet rocks reciting tales. Fallen groves divide what’s at stake. Vacancy creeps in and out whether you ask for it or not. What can’t be saved is crumbled. What can is re-straightened. He said he had previous aims for that night. He was not confused as they claimed. They too were decomposing. Long legs navigate no hurdles. Short legs do the same. Joining(s) and returning(s). He said what startled her had approached from the shooting range and that shipping costs will be five hundred. If you catch it, it is yours. Less motion can stifle if winter is late. Rusty metal was indeed misread. He crouches and does it again. She crouches to collect what someone else hadn’t. Neither budge. I have to get up from where I’m sitting.

Blending

A chill. A marbled alcove. A slight rotating exchange floats and evaporates as they enter before exiting. Thin folds pinned behind glass. A lull settles into an unevenness of crisp grays, draped and veiled with inverted orchestration. Breaks in notations never hurried. Inward attentions inexhaustible. I do not argue. Someone is sinking but I don’t see them. Left edge. In. Right. Out. I re-walk with brief winding nonchalantly. Lengthiness concise with recorded widths. A hand lifts. A hand falls. Counting segments useless. A long cloth is tearing inside 1000 boxes. His. Mine. Pile up. Flash, mirror. Topple. Falter. Unceremonious blue streaks cross. I reach the end not finished. I re-walk between second growth and open meadow. Eight dead birds rotting in sand surrounded by sticks to bury deeper. You can’t erase turning too soon by walking in front. Lost once. Twice. A blinding glare bellowed before reclining. Outpourings, silhouettes, loop.

Abstract painter Randee Silv writes likes she paints. Her wordslabs have appeared in Urban Graffiti, Revolt, Maudlin House and Swineherder. She’s editor of Arteidolia, a platform to re-approach and re-consider: visual, sound, word.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.