A Glossary of Poetic Abstraction
- William Gillespie
FIDELITY (fi*del*i*ty) 1. Sound quality of stereo components. 2. The state of monogamy, whether explicit or not.
A chessboard in a forest. A woman in a white dress sits at one side of the chessboard, waiting for another player. Knights ride by on snorting white steeds, armor clanking. They avoid eyecontact as they ride by. One of them notes that she is in check. She is sad but patient. She waits for someone to stop and take her king so that she can be out of the game forever.
DEMOCRACY (he*ge*mon*y) 1. In ancient Greece a form of patriarchy. 2. Rule by an elected official & 10,000 armed policemen.
A circle of people. They take turns speaking for five minutes each. They each speak a different language and nobody understands what anybody else says. Furthermore, each measures minutes differently. One of them thinks a minute is the length of time it takes Jupiter to revolve around the sun – 88 years. None of them know what they are gathered there to discuss.
FAMILY VALUES (wel*fare*cut) 1. A Reagan/Bushism concealing a particular domestic agenda. Married homosexual couples raising children are not considered families. Single mothers are not considered families. Neighbors are not considered families. Neighboring countries are not considered families. Families of species are not considered families. Most importantly, the country and everyone in it is not considered a family.
Donald Trump and Bill Gates stare into one another’s eyes dreamily above the candles, wineglasses, tablecloth. Bill puts his hand on Donald’s. Bill is about to say something important. The violinist senses this and drifts to another table. But the waiter has arrived tableside carrying a television set on a silver platter. The government policies you ordered have arrived, gentlemen, it is time for the president’s state of the union address. They turn their chairs to face the traytable as the waiter pulls the foil off of the neck of the frosted bottle & prepares to uncork the champagne.
KITTENHOOD or KITTENNESS (kyoot) 1.
La Maga is stalking a butterfly. She is the color of cappuccino-vanilla swirl ice cream. The butterfly is red, the grass is green, the sky is blue. She runs halfway up a tree, jumps off, runs to another tree, climbs halfway up.
TRUTH (pow*er) 1. The truth. 2. A lie.
Galileo is squinting through a telescope at a piece of green cheese in the heavens. He stands up and replaces the lens. He bends to look into the eyepiece again. He is now looking straight into the eye of God who is Catholic and furious. He stands up and replaces the lens, bends to look into the eyepiece again. He sees a rabbit. He makes a note on some parchment. He replaces the lens, bends. This time he sees a woman with a water pitcher. He smiles.
BEAUTY (pow’*er*fail*ure) 1. That quality which, when possessed, makes a person, place, thing, or idea beautiful.
The branches of the sapling fork like the crack in the brick wall.
The crack in the brick wall angles like the fork of lightning in the prairie.
The fork of lightning in the prairie is as angular as the spiderweb in the bathroom.
The spiderweb in the bathroom radiates like the cracks in the shattered windshield.
The cracks in the windshield are the same cracks as the cracks in the ice on the pond.
The cracks in the ice on the pond resemble the fractures in the skull on the x-ray.
The line on the electroencephalocardiograph is as flat as the horizon where the lightning struck before the car hit the tree.
Nobody has been back to his apartment since.
CRUELTY (un*em*ploy*ment*com*pen*sa*tion*can*cell*ed) 1. Not noticing or not caring.
The one whose job it is to refuse healthcare to people who are unemployed is at the hospital cafeteria. She has just quit her job. When she requests a refill on her coffee, holding out her cup across the counter, the woman behind the counter pours the coffee, calmly and deliberately, onto the wrist of the person whose job it was to refuse healthcare to those who are unemployed. The person screams and jerks her hand away, sending her elbow through the glass window of a cooler in which pies are displayed. Her arm is mangled and bloody and she is screaming with rage and pain. The woman behind the counter shrugs. Her daughter cannot afford healthcare.
MORALITY (mar*ket) 1. Generally morality is conceived as a market, generally with acts thought to be kind or just or selfless or merely difficult conceived of as profit, and acts that are selfish, corrupt, hypocritical, or forbidden conceived of as expenditure. This is only one of the many ways in which morality is conceived or talked about, but it is prevalent in our culture. For example:
“Having done my good deed for the day, I treated myself to an ice-cream cone.”
“Since I had let him borrow the rake, I figured that it was okay if I took his lawnmower without asking.”
“It didn’t bother me that I was sleeping with his wife. It’s not like he was a very good husband.”
I am looking at you. You are far away. Beneath us is a convoluted maze whose geometry sprawls to the edge of vision. I can’t swallow. De we both know the maze is there?
I look up and see we are each standing in a pan of a large scale. We are opposite each other and weigh approximately the same. When I try to move, the scale shifts and I see you lose your balance, grabbing a chain for support.