Webster’s defines “Exposition” as:

The space which I previously inhabited, as fast as I can: Lying like a black stream of cat, allay’d. Yellow between carbonations. Butane roughens up her gentle mouth at each downbeat of the see-saw. All of Lorain is connected by veins of allies deadending in blindness and slips of itch along joints. Slim. Today a cupped sun fritters sloth hours. I have houses behind me in which IO streams cast shadows in iron squint, and some nights they stand at the foot of my bed, crying me to sleep with a people’s fount. I would explain it thus:

I almost miss the recital.

Webster’s defines “Suffering” as:

Let me tell you the peace. Children rolled in thin sheets this season nominate flea-foam from kitten mouths for currency. I’ll trade that bound for fuel to smoke this. Take your mp3-player for a walk; under your skin, within it, time mints a lichen of cholera in technological colors, to trade for kinetics. Everyone I’m related to carries food for hours. When we get to the table, the stylesheet makes it very clear we should wait. To belong to a class, one must display similar properties, or declare oneself as an extension. You know, the feeling you get when you’re surrounded by familiar forms, flowing through familiar tasks. This commonality, sometimes expressed by reciprocal language, sets your partner at ease; half the time, all we really want is a mirror. But then sometimes, when I’m walking along minding my own business, I wish the pavement would collapse, and my next step be falling.

But mostly, branches moaning with leaves.

Webster’s defines “Comfort” as:

The K-9 unit barks rabidly as I cross the bridge. I smile back at the blank cop in the driver-seat; they’re always behind dark glasses, the purported protectors, so you can’t see their eyes, ever. How can you protect anybody when you’re behind dark glass? The clouds rake across the bridge, which is up now because a boat wants to leave the Black River and slip into Lake Erie, maybe on its way to Canada. They’re behind a deeper, clearer glass: the glass of my own sight. This is neither a solid nor a liquid, but something slow, something with lips of glaciers, speech of dry, cracked air. Why is the world always popping around me like that? As I walk, I feel this early August heat closing around my body, misting my thighs. I’m carving a space for myself in it, or is it simply giving me my perimeter? The other day, in the middle of the city, near a house set far back from the street, someone had propped one of those leaning silhouettes against their porch; in dim light, you’re supposed to believe that someone’s leaning against that house, smoking a pipe.

This is not a pipe. At least, on good days like this, I do believe the heat has something it can close upon

Webster’s defines “Public Speech” as:

It’s like sleeping in water breathing in water it’s like, beads of sweat popping inside your clothes in little wet flowers, little wet mouths. The cigarette sits on the desk before me. How long have I inhabited this divine confusion, where you define finitude as somewhat slanted and enchanted? Five common PHP design patterns, she says, but while she sleeps this sleek sincere elation. I haven’t been outside in days. It’s a bit like holding your breath until your blood cries out from the dust, froid, froid, froid! You’ve seen that movie, haven’t you? In your sleep your hair dances within the currents. I crush my breath out on it as it waves by, and I think about the many ways we have to represent water, how hard it is for 3-D Computer Graphics to represent these in-betweens of states of mater, liquid and haze, smoke and ocean, fire, fire, fire.

I think to of the gradations. There is only the Literal, my dear, and these shades are just other states we know exist, but rarely touch. Why do we limit what we know to these abrupt endings?