The Syndrome of the Catalogs

I have bushels full of opt. again. I mean this inkling that I've had umbilically came true all over. So I'm not so sure that I am here. This weevil side of underthings someone predicted. Where at times like this do you invest. In temperature, in petty norms, in types of commerce people crop about when they have no drug store or toy shop for retreat. Collections and corrections and seashores of dust. We're loose weavings of tentacles reflexively acquiring. He contacts me from space with all his anchors having lost weight and his tone rows blanching. Guide me home, I sometimes ask when he is looking like he's thinking about something else. Is there a wild attraction full of seams that says the "Do not enter" sign's an invitation. Promise me you'll find plainness fulfilling, I imply. Again, he does not hear me. He's ensconced in window shopping in the syndrome of the catalogues. Why don't we leave this one alone, he's sure to say when I am truly steamed and hoping that my germs catch other homes for them. He says again he'd like for us to cruise without control. The arboretum's nice, why don't we go there and imagine why the trees half sturdy and half interesting seem to grope for an uncharted sky. The only Romeo we know about in someone's heart has never had an artist's sketch and never will. Somewhere well within the Adirondacks is a word, a person, and a hope that everything will smooth itself to newmown hay. All things will gland. And everything will sew itself to the companion frenzy everyone has waited for that cannot last. A camera capable of doing that has springs. Leaps forward. Links each of the pictures in a rapid-fire arrangement. So everything that's possible bleeds into everything that's also possible. And dry land makes a showing someplace in the middle of the sea.

Imagination, shown and told and gradually improved upon, the sparks that race like heartbeats, a request for transfer

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Sheila E. Murphy | A Range of Quiet
Contents | Mudlark No. 8