Syndic Literary Journal

The Syndic Literary Journal edited by LeRoy Chatfield  has devoted a whole page to my work in issue #11 in both textual and audio versions. You get: "Seventh Street," a short story fragment from Poison and Antidote, "What if Words?" a poem from Sojourner, and "Liberation," an as yet unpublished prose poem from my Paradoxa series. Enjoy! Comment! Share! Make me (in)famous!

At the Stork Club

Me performing at Paul Corman-Roberts series "Crows in the Stork's Nest" at the Stork Club in Oakland, CA on August 14th, 2013.

For a full Write-up and film of the entire event see this page of the LITSEEN Blog.

LIBERATION

 LIBERATION

There is nothing so liberating. Nothing. There's nothing. There is nothing so frustrating as that. There isn’t even that. No, nothing’s so liberating as the frustration of waiting. There's nothing so frustrating as waiting for liberation. There isn’t. Because we forge chains. We forge chains because we’re afraid of nothing. Except frustration. Except liberation. So? So what.

Because alone is not alone, because nothing is just so. Because there’s nothing so liberating, or there wasn’t once, as a chain. And chains are real. Rings are real links and there’s nothing so, no, nothing so real as our own forged link in a chain. Anglo-Saxon tradition even here—and there’s nothing as frustrating as that.

When nothing is so, or as it seems. When there’s nothing as it should be because of rings and links, because of chains and time—time takes shape in rings, time takes shape in chains. And then there’s nothing, nothing but time's image round our fingers. Well, there’s nothing so frustrating as that. No, nothing. There’s no nothing as frustrating as the forced nothing of a liberation, of losing a ring. Because chains and rings are real. Because real rings go round and round.

Chains and rings are real because chains and rings are forged in time. We forge them in time in time’s image—and there’s nothing as frustrating as breaking a link, as breaking the round ring of a chain that we ourselves have forged in time. No, nothing’s so frustrating as that. So? So what. Nothing’s so, just so, so liberating as that frustration, as waiting to break a vow, because it breaks up the rings of your time of day.

1/22/1997

Florence