TE22 Potpourri

Isabelle Baladine Howald

Phantomb

go — close those gentle eyes / — doesn’t know — I’ll / handle — continue — / and you’ll live—, asking myself how can I live with the one that works in the woods —, the one that cuts down trees or gathers sap, with the herb reaper, with the photographer or the painter, the one that listens or the one that speaks, with the one laughing to tears in the photo or the one who holds his head in his hands the one of the figurines. With the little dead one. I remembered the ones with whom I had lived, with whom I didn’t sleep

Outburst in slow motion (impeded — as in water) gained in depth and in fatigue: opacity

(toward transparence—that’s what’s weighty:

makes it opaque)

slow movements of phantoms in me this morning draped in pliable plastic covers on the banister of the staircase — air rushes back

and I turned into the beaten horse

I

shifted without moving

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