Jocelyn Saidenberg

B L I N D  S P O T

— Flor, dear. They killed your folks.
— I warned you not to dig. Every single one of us. They set me on fire too.
I was on fire, I ran after them. I begged 'em to kill me. They laughed.
Don't dig, I said, didn't I?

        (Come and See, directed by E. Klimov, 1985, USSR—a film about
         the occupation of Byelorussia in 1943.)
 
 

an ordinary field with ordinary cows nearby runs an ordinary road. but
everything must sing the same song. no wrong notes while the watch is kept.
the outside husk frozen mud eyes open to the mold. a semblance of a city.
the doors are closed. deaf to rhythmic endless cries. shredded imposter.
nails. stores of hair. an endless landscape dwelling without.

the suggestion of doubt. a genuine style. to produce a fullness.
we. drowning in our circles of possibilities.
force yourself force others. the time in which.
an insubordination of expression.
 

talking asking something of the side of a tremendous hole cursing it or
praying. time passing but not past. then further in the sand digging a hole
into the ground into the sand itself.

relentless inexorable yearning and tenderness leaning downwards. careful
not to choke. enclosed with the invisible yet shiny moveable. malleable.
turning. starting downwards.

on an island encased and floating in biological sludge. water made dense
impenetrable with algae. dear Flor left behind for your shoes in exchange.
you the newcomer you wounded your attachments left behind unraveled.
no lack of specificity yet seeking more.
 

no fruits or vegetables so as not to infect. all the trouble starts with their
kids. they having them spreading contaminants microbes more moral
infliction. a token of our infection.

Flor. stand for yet another photograph. this time (not with the partisans
with your double breasted jacket shoes still intact) but with a gun to your
head pointed at your brain dear Flor.

be on your way. be on beyond what makes them bid you to do their bidding.
be gone.

they will kill the cows also take the pigs and geese for later. encompassed in
black smoke blurring your picture. fire spilling across the road like rain but
slower. kicked in the ass for dead.

        exposures and hesitations
        resistance and restraint
                                                the
                                                specificities
        reflections / necessary links
                    underscore a perpetual
                            struggle

        not using a prefabricated
                            rubric
                            but
                            movements

                                                already
        a vanishing point which always

                    always a small door we might
                                                                    enter
                                                        under the
                                                                    clouds

not the last but the last after the last
 

the well-intended reconfigures that which it seeks to vanquish.
inadvertently. an infirmity without content. striving ever for the present.
the fate of infinitude to dwell in negligence. rusted. trusting resilience.
 

a stern face. not the newcomer's. speaks with a gesture says. save her for
your pleasure. burn the rest.

the captain's daily conversation.

burn the rest.
leave the grandmother to breed.
she's in the bed in a field clutching a blanket for warmth and protection.
struggling to register diversity and recalcitrance not an impoverished
impression.
she hunts for crude instruments.
 

resistance to work in work
                                    instructions our blind spots their outlines
                                    road hazards up to the level of urgency
                                    our retaliation making mud soldiers on the shore

happening and making it happen at the same instant. having a stake in
construction burdened but not restricted. a more difficult labor of agency.
a point of departure not an ossified point but emerging from it.

muddy boots stored in a drain pipe in the woods besides a busy intersection.
 

Flor never returns with the cow to feed the people who are escaped from
his or their town to an island excluding the effigy. the cow lost along with
the companions are killed in the cross fire light show land mines. the cow
sinks to her knees not sure if she is dead yet. like cut flowers in water. then
dies slowly through the night Flor's pillow.

the newcomer. not digested but kept alive within the flock of pedestrians.
gathering in puddles. making mud in hollowed out cavities.
 

the people on the island made an effigy. a ritual for the effigy. Florian's hair
adorned the skull whose flesh was clay. they saluted him told him their
problems he had but to listen. Flor tried to put his head in the sand. no one
could stop him. Grace seems to have seen glimpses over her shoulder what
Florya couldn't yet see: the bodies his family twin baby sisters his neighbors
his childhood friend. left yesterday out back behind the houses.
 

under its tendentious laws. maim existence. paralyze thinking. about time.
about change. divorces us from speech. from our speech itself. against the
narrow or local ways that construe. construct. make a megaphone out of
your hands. reassert the specificities.
 

Grace wanted to be glamorous a Lily of the Valley from a famous city. but
Flor made deaf by the bombs left to constant whirring and oscillations just
whirring. whining undertones enacting contents.

Grace aware of her intense femininity. her frustrations. waiting then
distraught then destroyed. not about her but to narrate her life as she
might have told it. her own reflections on herself following closely. not
fatefulness. can there be in us anything which can contain?
 

they had stolen a cow from a villager who was out behind his small farm
pissing in an early morning fog. a regular morning routine while under siege.
the cow came to be left on her side in the field no promise of milk nor meat
not for anyone. wasted meat and milk and god said to the cow: the truth
gives birth to hatred! as the darkness was overtaking her. the cow watching
the light show. a servant of truth having neither joy in truth or falsehood.
small hesitation small wealth of countenance. she might have wanted to
deceive to play a game on the villager but never be deceived. just self truth
joy in truth. her claim but dimly now standing then resting. the darkness
overturning her. she. servant to none now.
 

inundation. sutures. respiratory value drinking in. ligatures. we could hear us
thinking. to accomplish the multiple and disarticulated rhythmic roaring. not
portioned but fabricated refusing to be absorbed. that invitation at least
rejected.

meaning's evisceration. self-cancellations self-penetrations. inceptive.
 

not assured by but exercised. magnets on the heels of his shoes. kicking
stones.
 

the village had made them supper dinner for the victors while the newcomer
sat amongst them the villagers who were serving the victors while he sat
planning: how to not write their history. of the victors. but the history as it
was being transmitted to him history executed in contract promise pact from
the past to the future to and by those complicit who anticipated his coming.
pledge to write a history. this emergency. the state of his emerging he has
come to be living. theirs. they. dear Flor. you with them watch the victors
eat the food that has been prepared by the villagers. they give them clean
linen to wipe their mouths. the soldiers break the windows to ask the
villagers for seconds. they give the victors some hot tea. soon the victors
round them up with music. a hunting tune sung with yodels burn them live
in their own town hall. their lives. make them dance in circles. the dogs
barking continuously with the music furious at the constraint. asked to obey.
Flor watches. a notion of the present not transition not progression to obey.
but arrested coming to a stop. pause. one in which he can start to write.
 

without enthusiams without a preoccupied manner without exchange values
but to register a vital pleasure looking being vivid. render nearnesses
themselves.
 

Florian's new friend. mentor and hunting pal who charts for Flor a road
toward self-awareness. toward becoming his own. is killed. the soldiers
strip him naked and tie his hands together around a sign lying flat on his
back hands clasped at his chest heavenly rest with a wooden sign pole tied
between lying on top of a side car. the sign saying "I insulted a Soldier" held
by a dead man Flor's friend and cohort and so deserving to die repeating
the insult and apology and punishment he is paraded through town sign still
growing out of his stomach for all to see. soldier. partisan. villager. peasant.
small child. cow. in the town square. they jam the throttle open and turn
the wheels all the way to one side. so as if in a new life of his own the dead
man on his back pitched across the side car of a motorbike now running
with a life of its own that gives the dead man a new life of his own and
a sign to ride around inexorably. come and see.
 
 

a carcass we will be
            and he our tomb
                              which we saw in their faces

            half clay like the part you acted
                        kinships adoring
                        and perish and contract
                        unalloyed elements

to linger be diffuse and spread in infinity in your eyes dear Flor. the secret
pact for us to witness. a chance in flight. a tasteless seed. expected and
awaiting. brushing it against the grain. seeing our coming Flor's face
emerges. flickering.
 
 

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