Issue 32: William Fuller

House of Mars

what’s unthought is a scant blur to which it points, sitting higher than others in the order of secrets, interlaced with threads that grow paler over time, while pieces are peeled off in strips, to be embodied in an arbitrary typeface, somewhere among trees full of sparrows, or beside a group of large rocks, it resembles a figure eight, with people standing off to one side while the loops twist and glide, sending faint shapes into space, where some detect outlines of an embryo, a mouse or a pig or a toad, along a curved line rising up from nowhere, making the birds behave strangely, and in the descriptions that follow, held between thumb and forefinger, certain principles are invoked without being named, which leads to a slight delay, after which someone takes a road through the woods, knowing nothing will be there except animals pursuing their own particular goals, which change over time, and eventually things enter a new phase, featuring different scenery, where nervous impulses coordinate a certain thrust, causing trees to flare up to the sky, and those who aren't there return to those who are, but with smoother edges and looser effects, they lie down free of constraint, acting as if nothing has happened, which becomes part of the finished piece—what was said then hasn’t been said since, as people depart with only a blanket, rippling their way across the field and its tinted window, nor does any one of them rule out any other, for they have all come to be—rather, think of them as standing in a row, lit from below, or renewing themselves, seated at a table on which everything is off by half an inch, due to bending and folding of thoughts, which had descended along a dotted line through the street noise—the situation is not tenable, although it’s similar to some that are, when thought at last reaches out with clarity, and the shape of a horse appears, from pure invention, nor does its imagined presence withdraw itself from the water and the boats and the docks, or those dark brown ridges extending themselves to the east, producing sound without echo, starting with the exhalation of a clear tone, derived from all ten strings of earth and sky, sweeping across the inner life of the mantic stratum, to re-emerge in human form, pieced together from various parts, now and then poking through the names they carry, but other than this there’s nothing, which is a kind of form, with several lively elements, like an old postcard of key words en route to China or Japan, bypassing sun-bleached beaches, to enter a fresh temporal span, whose primary qualities signify the present in a refined manner, through circles and lines, with delicate edges, and a finite system of pencil drafts showing enough detail to promote growth of nearby objects, which lean to one side, away from what restrains them, before dispersing into the mist-like hints of what they will become, without skin and teeth and sinews, tracing an orbit that never completes, absent movement from below, bridging the distance between zones by raising and lowering the head, until everything is ready to burst, except for one out-stretched hand, covered in droplets, which gathers up whatever it can

William Fuller’s most recent book is Daybreak; Signal Flow is forthcoming from Flood Editions.

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