G-NT3806KSJP

THE I AS YET A STRANGELY PART OF SPEECH / November 16, 2017





       
            How to say I was refused to be known. How to say I was absent etymology. How to say I beside and additionally. How to say I and refuse the noun that was named and go on doing. How to not say not say not say yet I am saying how to not say without refusing the lesson. How to refuse the saying I write with the most derelict of plumes. How to refuse to write my name into some thing not said when so helplessly absolutely built about. Yet I thus far already so soon but still as yet abounds. To say I yet must mime my mouth into the shape of some shout that is unspeaking the preparation of words. But that doesn’t really answer how to not be called the name given to I a noun that has come from some elsewhere said unknown. I want to ask I want to repeat the question so how write the silences yet not deny I the pleasure that is found in the impersonal sound of Grandmother Gertie’s heels greeting the asphalt asphalt asphalt asphalt on her way home I always suddenly hear from her bed by the window. When I am at fault refusing the I is writing the eye twitching the inside. Love is on the inside says Grandmother Gertie write in I near what is like what. I coldly sweat instead without the warmth of a glow where the warmth is still inside of yet how to love. The nay of me neighs out somehow but how was struck from the where and Grandmother Gertie I know I know grotesqued by question but “tender” in French is what. I am yet climbed so sorry out of her bed where I am becoming Gerund Gertie’s lectures the aftermath of her letters when I am flawing the possibility of words flourish and mine collapse is where I crave. That was then the early aurora risen on ways home at intermittent flashing stoplights when all is still enough quiet to listen to their switching off their switching on and it grows bright upon the dark morns. My goodness how I mean my god how I actually mean but not really want to say when will it stop. But where else perhaps now is a good place when tomorrow I’ll turn on my side to alleviate the bedsores of this nouns are sure. The proper business of soumissionner is me infinitely infinitive and not what it’s sounding like yet I submit the I as yet a strangely part of speech.




Jared Daniel Fagen is the author of The Animal of Existence, forthcoming from Black Square Editions in 2022. His prose poems and essays have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Asymptote, Prelude, and Caesura, among other publications. He is founding editor of Black Sun Lit, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an English instructor at the City College of New York. Born in Seoul, he lives in Brooklyn and the northern Catskills.