then I had news        people were washed away they say

water went away they say            fog was not complete

 

they say your eyes do not mistakes

people were washed away

 

from the nothing

the increase

 

from the tile the paver the sacred the numinous

to gather from his hairbrush the news

 

the fork the wire the sacred small papers of rain

the beam the cutter was not they say

 

from the nothing

the increase the many the faded the washed away

 

your eyes do not make mistakes

they say

“On my way to Hiroshima,” wrote Noguchi, “where I was to propose the design of two bridges for the Peace Park, I stopped by the city of Gifu to watch the cormorant fishing.”

 

How far beneath and silently?

 

“A low wall, perhaps four feet in height, surrounds upturned video monitors emitting blue light. This modesty screen is intended to prevent small children from watching the graphic and murderous scenes.”

 

“A clerestory, pronounced clearstory, is a high wall with a band of narrow windows along the very top.”

 

She wrote that disasters are revealers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which comfort do you seek, wringing out the sorrow previously held in order to make way for the new?

 

How much violence is an echo?

 

 

 

I await your reply, which I expect will be global-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Flannel-board Story Activity:

 

Please help students compare their lives to the enslaved child.

 

Dear Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Welcome

 

to a dynamic opinion pulse

 

that illustrates the tensions of translating. Dear Lesson Plan:

 

watch digitally enlarged sentences scroll upward in a vertical polling chamber and feel the proof of it,

 

my craning neck. Dear Conspiracy: Take your opinion

 

and make me a city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Tower of Faces: I know nothing about you

 

except your collective status as victim. Archive: We are coping

 

with huge sets of historical data.

 

Visitors: Use your key

 

to record opinions immediately,

 

tally and present your pillar of thought, your architect, our father, your mark.

 

Sincerely yours, White Wall of Rescuers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the lowest right corner of the wall, I read the following instructions:

 

To see the real thing, no reconstructions, a student will make a diorama depicting history to the left, such as Anne Frank, and to the right of the register: black people in miniature, plus a squaw, another squaw,

 

to purchase to make a disaster event with feathers with beads with real –

 

 

 

 

We tell the world what the children draw for sale will save us.

 

 

 

Dear Venn Diagram:

Students will write a class story dealing with a slave who becomes free, using free-writing to express feelings, fast, without thinking, without crossing out, and preferably timed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Platforms will be built with seminal views to reconnect the visitor to the outside world.”

 

 

 

 

But visitor, where did you go?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A marble floor tile shifts

 

and in its loosened state I slip down into a basement

and there I meet Fred Wilson, mining the museum, saying:

 

“This situation in the world is not particularly worse than other moments. It just depends on who you are. It helps to diffuse the anxiety knowing that you’re in this continuum.”

 

 

He pulls paintings out of storage. He draws a line to that point.

 

 

 

“Despite red velvet linings, memories are like nettles that come back long after the first touch.”

 

“Whose memories?”

 

“I have a family,” answers the didactic.

 

 

 

 

 

from the nothing the increase

I make a space

 

between me and this room

what I feel of my old sadness

 

is a shining blue-like body

from the nothing to the increase

 

I reproduce myself endlessly

causing little figures

 

drawing thin lines

I break

 

with mourning

after the 13th day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rough Guide to the USA

Let’s Go USA

Rough Guide to New York City

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

Lonely Planet USA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Language of Inquiry and One Continuous Mistake hold bookmarks that read “Borders Books.”

 

A month after the event, the kind man told me to go and mourn the destroyed books. He unfurled the following blueprint:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To give a glass bowl.

Go into the forest and hang their clothes from trees.

 

 

To make a new entrance to the building.

Give everyone a new name.

 

 

So as to remember the ruin.

Leave a space in the new house undone –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Peter Eisenman explains how he fought to keep names off the stones of the Berlin Holocaust memorial.

 

At the ceremony to mark the beginning of its construction, he stumbles: “I never at many moments thought we would build this and here it is.”

 

The project is delayed when the company commissioned to make an anti-graffiti coating for the stones is found to have also produced gas for Nazi extermination camps.

 

On the day that the memorial opens, an “unidentified youth” is photographed jumping from pillar to pillar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Documentary:

Catalogue this wood-rot, this moss

encroaching. Preserve the footprint.

Bar-code a furrowed brow.

 

Please slot

your next erosion event with us.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

This is an extract from Jill Magi’s SLOT, forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse Dossier Series this fall.  Read the text as the author’s PDF here . 

Jill’s AUDIO LETTER TO DAVID, part of her SMALL TALK SMALL BOOKS residency for VerySmallKitchen’s DEPARTMENT OF MICRO-POETICS is here.