Issue 31: Simon Perril

from 45 DAYS IN THE COMPANY OF ROBERT WALSER

2.

Kindly mark us, Robert, the very small

as we are trained; and walk with me

down the linoleum corridors

of the New Institute Benjamenta,

over crunchy, cross-hatched carpets.

Lights flicker in the lecture theatre

winking and synching

a dance of performance indicators

extra-terrestrial at play

across the ceiling; so

we quanta settle into the subject,

learn the sub-atomic servitude

of working life misbehaves

under the right conditions.

9.

Robert, last night

I watched my own sleep

become a curled caesura tadpole

tax the box of my body

and forge a lyric tract

in tremble there

sorting the shadows

into self-portraits

all black

suspended

on the cool glass

of a microscope slide

16.

Oh Robert, have you read

the Fungible Times headlines

this morning? They throb

then spurt like a provoked jugular.

Hammer-style the horrors

bubble in quicksand, some

demonic porridge we’re stirred in

comes to the boil

— and is served at the Institute.

We fatten, fed our own husks.

The leviathan of capital

bolts us, yet doesn’t spit

out the bones; rather,

trades us: scrimshaw.

24.

I confide, Robert,

that I woke late, determined

to put the day on backwards

surprise it, catch it out,

ape its loping gait

from behind

understudying Peter Schlemihl

shrugging off his shadow

in a pact with the purse

of Fortunatus.

The lecture today

said nothing about allegory

yet considered a role profile

for a new category of stone.

33.

The Institute, Robert, excels

in persuading us you were right

to extol the virtues of ash

as we disappear here

happily take flight

blown from the Palace

zeros expelled

by mocking shapes

a mouth makes in calculation.

We have no recall

of the dialogue between fire

and wood that reduced us

to a smudge

nudged away

with the frivolity of dust

to nest in kinship

underneath the words

achieving nothing