SPD STAFF PICK 2010:
SLEEPINGFISH 8
The Best of The Frikin Best
According To E. Spero
OR:
"Things You Can Learn About Language From the Collective Dreams of Sleeping Fishes"
Let's say you were to walk
into an elevator. Let's say you were running & you just barely caught the
last BART train across the Bay, or let's say you're in the fingerprinting line
at the food stamps office, or it's that moment right at the very top of the SEA
DRAGON carnival ride when you're all suspended up in the air all together
for just one breathless time-collapsing pause before the plummet. Well O.K., but really you just walked into an
elevator. This is when the dreaded moment occurs. The doors slick shut &
you're trapped now in this un- space with one or maybe even four or five
total strangers or vague acquaintances for maybe two whole minutes, or it could
even last four minutes if you're, say, going all the way up to the 17th floor,
which of course, you are. Any other day, this would be torturous. Any other day
& you would be rolling your eyes up to the security camera just to avoid
direct or mirrored eye contact with your fellow cell-mates. But not today.
Today you are Brave. Meteorologists have observed that prolonged exposure to
other humans on code-orange Brave Days can result in the following symptoms:
➞
Being Late To Work, or Having Sore Wrists (from waving Hello to everybody you
pass)
➞
Finding Your Pockets Full Of Phone Numbers (from asking that Really Neat Girl
At The Pirate Shop & that Cute Tranny At The Bus Stop & the Balloon-Dog
Guy for their digits)
➞
A Sudden & Immediate Urge To Fight The Fighters (the guy picking fights at
the bar, the police, your evil twin)
➞
Singing Backup Vocals For Birds & Fire Trucks & Pile Drivers (even
though you can't sing.)
So if you find yourself
caught on a Brave Day in just such an un-space, or if you suddenly find
yourself somewhere between accepted realities or "among a group of people
who share no connections beyond their waiting," you could unfold the
haiku/novella/abacedarius you just wrote from your pocket; you could proceed to
perform it for them (Remember to use voices. Remember, they can't walk
out on you. They're as stuck as you are.). Or if that's beyond your Brave, you
could reach into your satchel/knapsack/clutch & extract your
suddenly-materialized copy of Sleepingfish 8 (it only exists in
in-betweens) & start reading aloud/under your breath "when you get
swallowed by the sidewalk chances are if you don't die you will end up in a
small house with a chimney" or "The Vanished". Again, remember
to use voices. Also, don't worry if you don't finish the story before
floor 17; you'll probably have to come back down sometime. If this is too much
Brave for you on even the redest of Brave Days, you could always try pulling
one or two lines from each (or almost every) short story, change them just-so
or just-a-little & piece them back together to create something entirely
other. It could even look a bit like this:
SOME THINGS YOU CAN LEARN
ABOUT LANGUAGE
FROM THE COLLECTIVE DREAMS
OF SLEEPING FISHES
1. words are insects with
very short lifespans
& are flammable when
dried; they never were yours
2. & no one even asked
3. why would someone hide a
bird in their mouth, or
why would someone keep an
ocean in their chest.
4. to differentiate these
rooms from one another,
try substituting synonyms,
you could fit words between
the wallpaper's crowded
arabesques or with
pointillist patterns of
light, unwrite these rooms.
5. if your words are ever
stuck in between
sky & water, or if you
find that they have been buried,
are a figment of sky inside
the ground, beneath
the lake, that your words
fell birds or forgive you,
follow, listen, watch,
6. hover at your hatches,
between the world
of the one giant body &
your lonely but familiar cells.
7. when you are out at sea
&
strange fine grains collect
at the back of your throat
or, when you are locked in
an underground prison,
pretend to write something, pretend
to write something,
8. make small sounds in the
dark
to not disappear, or moan a
little,
9. or eat all the pages out
of your books.
& if they don't make
sense until
you cut out all the words
& rearrange them,
or if of course it is not
enough,
10. push. push. or pull.
pull.
& what a coward we would
be to stop.
11. when nobody knows
12. & anything can
happen
at the beginning of the next
after
or at the start of something
different
13. of the possible
fictions, ask yourself
14. if you're lying, if
you've listened, if you're
the most literal sense of
the word,
an incomplete poem or a
pretty cliche, if
15. in your apparent amnesia
& your total inability
to finish the poem, to hold
on,
16. will you say
So Long, See You Tomorrow?
17. is every word a stone
&
will you fall the wall down?
is everything possible
& are you surprised?
18. to realize you've long
ago forgotten
19. you are what you
remember? remember
you are a life, remember
you are enough, remember
we lie & we lie & we
lie.
20. if there is a world
between
your mouth & this
moment,
sew words into your tongue
& stay
21. & dream
22. & if writing will
get it wrong
& if every blue effort
expires
(& imagination won't
answer the phone)
23. or if sometimes there
isn't any room at all
on this page & you feel
small & flesh is crushing
you cannot move. the text's
all gone.
you're feeling very tired.
24. remember people singing
remember puddles on the
floor
remember riding the ferry
from home
for hours, remember
sleepiness,
milling about, to loiter,
remember wanting the
impossible
sudden something, remember
waiting among a group of
people
who share no connections
beyond their waiting
25. when you leave, do you
say goodbye?
do you turn around afterwards
& turn around again
to say goodbye once more?
to say goodbye
just once more
goodbye
once more
once more?