ROB FAIVRE's poems have appeared in Talisman, Notre Dame Review, Hazardous Materials Review and Aught. His chapbooks include Looking for The Lost and Walking, which is due this summer. He lives in upstate New York. THE WORLD, AGAIN Saturday mid-day, the world turns its attention to a student of the world, funnels down through his myopic lenses, here in a second-floor niche of the public library. Due north, straight ahead: Confederate flag in the apartment window over Mino's Sushi House. The world allows discontinuities to collide in the tunnel of vision. A Confederacy of Sushi! Fresh fish for General Sherman! The student releases the pencil and returns to the reading. The world scans the first sentence - "Representations of the world in written discourse are engaged in con- structing the world" - and jerks the pink house from the eastern periphery into view. Pink, but not so pink as flesh, salmon or otherwise. pearl(s) He recited them one by one one after another from the year's work typed and clipped in a binder He was surprised to hear anyone was studying Marx since the wall came down He levered his leg straight over his head and touched his foot to demonstrate a flexibility He wouldn't advise revising this but perhaps I have written hastily without the necessary labor four studies from stills one eyes down the mouth pinched paused in intake chin and cheek flexing to draw another measure of breath to form "expulsion" to form "implode" two hand to face and forehead darkened in recollection as if but not regret neither sorrow but consideration hair white in the yellow light even this little makes too much three reading index to eye reading the drawn isosceles of cheek and mouth arc of hairline vectors of woodwork reading four within the familiar frame directness is a look not a smile not mere regarding but beyond the frame arms open |