Appendix

ix
Clarity
Just say what you mean,
I remind myself,
as I gaze into the abyss
that comes after the ellipses
where the words left unsaid,
which can merely be guessed,
flap their hands or shrug their shoulders.

I want to tell you a story,  
nothing more, nothing less,
but how many things have I not told you
because I’d have to rewrite myself?

xiii
Mendacity
The writer awakes
under the weight of stardust,
groping in the dark for impossible things,
stumbling over a sleeping dog
and falling into a pile of feces --
rolling in it,
making mudpies out of it,
chewing it, swallowing it
and spewing out
bright, shiny, fully-formed ideas.

But it was all a dream.

The writer awakes
under a blank sheet of paper,
hair matted, eyes bleary,
breath stinking of archetypal lies,
and searches for truth
in your many faces.

I could speculate forever
on which one is real,
or on how to write what I know,
when I know nothing for certain,
or I could confabulate now.

iv
Expository
Even the word expositive conveys the negative.
I should really take a detour
around the no-man’s land
also known as the information dump,
ignoring the flailing arms and the cries of ‘backstory’
from two-dimensional characters
or those brave souls killed off in chapter one,
and skip to the section on selection.

There, I could equip myself
with a trusty saw and a length of rope
and proceed with caution.
The wrong way leads to a forest of falling trees;
the shortcut lands you straight in the morass.

If only I had a compass and a map,
I’d know which to go,
but wandering
is far better than wondering...   

xiv
Telepathy
You can read my mind.
I’m an open book
Okay, a few of the pages are missing,
But your name is Enigma.

I don’t know you, but I think I love you.

I feel somewhat vulnerable before you,
but I’m not entirely powerless.
I can possess your senses.
I can tear away the curtain and let you become
a voyeur and an eavesdropper
on conversations and innermost thoughts,
your reflection in the mirror
never giving away your presence to anyone.

I can deftly draw your attention
away from my devices,
and our pretences will fall away.
Then your spine and mine will entwine
in syntax.

xxii
In theory
There is a nether-space where words go to die,
when I hit delete.
If an infinite number of aspiring authors
at an infinite number of keyboards
deleted an infinite number of words,
a neverending story would lie at the bottom
of a bottomless cup of coffee
and in the holes of donuts.

In theory
I could be sitting in the same booth
that you are about to occupy.
If I took out a pen
and wrote a novel on a napkin
would you find it,
or would you find
the gum stuck to the underside of the table?

xi
Reality
Without meaning to
I write an entire story between the lines.
Those white spaces elude me sometimes,
like the slats transecting the view out of my window
or the wall
that if stared at long enough appears ineffably blanker,
or the gap between you and me,
which I can only traverse
by placing one word after another.

Appendix
As much as I wish it weren’t so,
like everything else I write,
this is just something I wrote
instead of writing something else.

If I could actually say what I mean,
my words would be writ in the pupils of your eyes.

--by M. Alice Chown