Marginalia

In a film from a previous generation, the killer peels a guard’s face, escapes with it cupped across his own.

“Face” in Asian cultures is a social construct. It is a value gained or lost, depending on behavior and circumstance. Mess up doing something you were told not to do, you’re fucked—no sympathy from anyone.

“Now we are working together,” she said, and turned around, handed me another word to carry. A small, rounded word. I struggled to lift it. The word was heavy with hatred at its center.
 

 
November 24, 1922: The patent for the “Double-Swinging Mirror Compact Case.” The device comprised two boxes hinged by a mirror. The boxes contained powder, rouge and other mauve habiliments. Powder puffs were placed on top of the rouge and powder compacts, and the mirror served as a division, folding down upon the rouge puff and taking a position between the compacts when the device was in a closed position. Later versions were slimmer and lighter and available in a gold-tone finish.

The devices of our age have brought new efficiencies to what has breathed for centuries. The mirror was the beveled line. Before it, people were blurred allegories. It was only when they thumbed the imperfections of their faces they realized how joyfully doomed they were.

Bottles that say “yes” as morning sun runs through their belly. Bottles that hold a crack, waiting to dissolve along its fissure.

The coalescence of vesicles. Leathery induration. Hemorrhagic at the stratum layer. You can remove the sting with cortisone, or a teaspoon of religion.

It is now believed that Poe died not of metaphor, but mimesis ingested over long periods.

The bad know how to bend punishment into profit.

The right nostril doesn’t have a nickname for the left. At this point in the project: gravel, hush, cool wind on the back. It carries a moment, name, thought, perfume, laugh that once lingered in a curtain.
Nobody believed de Sade, but they believed Genet. Maybe because Genet didn’t have a castle to go back to.  

A wet stain on the carpet—about 20 inches long and wide. The man started wiping, and it was red. It kept coming up red.

Sometimes the river addresses you by name. Sometimes the flight attendant is a beautiful liar.

The pilot radioed to find out what happened between seats 30A and 30B. The crew took turns being angry for the man. The man traveled from a country where truth was always dyed a different color.