Daniel Uncapher

Vanishing Point

Sam afraid of Sam the sandman, bound handy, blue flowers underfoot. Winter exposure, and if yes smaller rooms than to each to her or to her own, colder weather. Mask collector: assassin mask, drinker mask, milk-drinker this for that, wealthier or not, unhealthy human habits in unmasked faces and she called it Samson, thrasher-in-the-dust. Sam the Samnite, fifth prefect of Judaea year 26 killer-Christ unemancipated, shorter winter less than magic, Christmas notwithstanding not alone, without that open spanning night and in that hot side-of-the-road anticipation, black forest wall to no avail, without nothing. She sat at the foot of her bed playing video games with herself in this imaginary state-of-mind, flight or free, full of boundary, and they woke that night the aggressor, sickwards pants forward, old maid the confessor. Soft looker so-called the parable, me about me, for example the prodigal son not one she understood well at all; it remained a mystery even as she came to terms with far more impenetrable myths. Went to play felt distinct new feelings. The effects of candles in cold spaces, worn muslin, relentlessly didactic, audio player, cold smell of single panes — replace them, glazier! Special benthic layer, line behind her and her world of her childlike her awe, so broken, sources of angst and despair, nothing connects, non-adhesive, disconnected tissue, nothing seemed connected then, it was constant anguish. Meaning without mark, presence without trace, no motion, full falter the faltering forward, on — so on trouncing downward, overdrawn. The subjugation of the Samnites and Samson go down without grace. Safe without skin in the toxic secretion, the suprastructure of mappable worlds, surface-reminiscence. She set herself apart by the movements she had no control of, the tectonic plates, the arrangement of atoms, the circumlocution of planets and stars. Mispronounced names, no correctors, non-reciprocal faith. The difference between an encyclopedia a reference guide a bibliography, hagiograph, macrophage. The defining quality of things: 10,000 performative verbs in a dictionary. Take her to task. Dressage, dancing horses, arrow-time. The message was clear: Samson Option, world obliterator. Two already, more to come; something to eat, something too sweet, something eaten, something weak. Ships crashing from the sky. Dead Philistines, empty coast, dry canopies. The parable of the prodigal son went on undeciphered. Nothing changed in her heart. She reached out if blindly in every direction but alas just two hands, just two directions, two simultaneities. Hubble-like hyperopia — the vision ends at reception. Samnite to Samson, collapser of pillars, under rocks now Sam, hypnogenic, surpassing Sam no longer of the world; only Samsara, the surpassive self, the stepping towards eschaton, Samsara who doesn’t exist, non-exaltant. The fruit has been picked from the plant and boiled to a reduction, the silhouette flattened into a single beam of asymptotic narrowing light no one washes, there is nothing to clean, no glom, no magnanimity, there is only Samsara, borrowed light, simply machine, only Sam sans Samson, sand without grain, waste no receptacle, and Sam as Samsara, who doesn’t exist.

Daniel Uncapher is the Sparks Fellow at Notre Dame, where he received his MFA. His work has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Baltimore Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and others.

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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.