This today...

from Lisa Robertson's spectacular poem "Of Mechanics in Rousseau's Thought" from R's Boat (UC Press, 2010):


The suppleness of these amusements

Beginning—middle—end

The Etruscan scrotum of clay beneath Perspex

The wrapped breasts of a hermaphrodite

Wished to anticipate

—textile-like—

The padded wall

As loss

The wrongness is philosophical.


October's topmost wandy slim branch

Unsnarls the

Air versus what is

Public: the technology of habit


I awake into an original greediness

Into glossy persimmon-crested notebook called Sylvine

Into large creamy notebook with title Precious Ego

Into small blue-marbled notebook with powder-blue cotton spine

Bought in London, December, 1999

Glossy black notebook with red-ink-edged pages, water dampened

Into many sexes slowly pivoting like leaves