From Enclosure







Lili is the white fly albino thistle in a mustard yellow field violet-pricked her thumb a jagged sandstone hollow tap of weak marble underfoot Lili is and is not this wheat grass this marsh grass this green auburn of the dyed together morning breaking light into she is not this bright dark.














[2]





She cannot
  "go on,
wake herself fully
  speak, pronounce!"
from this dreamed blanket
  he says, begs
images scatter like fleas
  an hour more, convinced
over the woolen surface
  carving her to thought, culling from her as
of this or any other institution
  a sign to hold him closer
she awaits visitors, a
  lover in the wings
visitor in the ear of her
  waiting for her to wake
senses an eye, the other
  him, he, hers
watching the way she makes
  "I still am,"
her way room to room
  he says, wonder
and back
  does she know, or
again to him she might
  realize he's there
say
  waiting for language
she might be saying
  a message just for him
something
  nothing special—recognition of the hours
awakened













[3] 







He came into the room

"Lili?" asked in the
Candlelit dark of
Her room.  "Lili?"  waited
Waiting in the corner for
Him to edge

"Closer" she whispers, he
Does not hear  Out
Side a clear night
A clear sight
Line magnified
For awhile
That was how the world
Came to her
Enlarged

It was larger than
Life
These bits of porcelain
On the floor crunching
Underfoot as he,
"Lili?" tenderly steps over
To reach
Her, reaching out
To her, "Seek," she
Says, she does not say
Anything so that he can
Hear

Her in the corner
In the cornered space.  He
Edges along as if the world
In his head
Were growing louder
 
With each step













[4]







a return to anonymity, progression

in regression, she pauses at threshold

what is out / in, before / behind shifting

envelope of skin, sky, eye

the way this closer world seals

in the ceiling as the front rolls

cumulous inwards over her out

sides the peel of Eve’s apple

unraveling a voice or sound if

from her would emerge, startle, stun







The France Issue

Summer 2010

From Enclosure

Jennifer K. Dick

Jennifer K. Dick is the author of Fluorescence (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2004), the art chapbook Retina/Rétine (Paris: Estepa Editions, 2005), & the eBook Enclosures (Buffalo, New York: BlazeVox Books, 2007). New work appears in 12 x 12: Conversations in 21st Century Poetry & Poetics (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2009) & Ondulations (collaborative art/poetrybook, Aeneis Editions, France, 2009). Living in Paris, Jennifer completed her PhD at Paris III in 2009. She teaches for EHESS, co-curates the IVY Writers Paris reading series with Michelle Noteboom, & writes a regular poetics column for Tears in the Fence in the UK.