Delirious Hem
Tribute to Leslie Scalapino
Deborah Poe
1 of 3
Roseau
after Jim Wilson’s photograph (New York Times, May 18 2010)
strong
erect stems
flat linear leaves
a plumose panicle of flowers cosmopolitan genus of reeds
so-called
today flows into tomorrow today flows into yesterday
yesterday flows into today
a compound
living and
dead
oil gulf stretched washed
into grasses stretched on eastern side
South Pass of Mississippi River
stretched in Louisiana
[the threshold is ribbed and reinforced light
reinforcing the light threshold
a compound of living
oil from the leaking gulf folded
folded into grasses
folded south
Louisiana
[lacking which it cannot project
it cannot protect
cannot horizon
compounds
oil from leaking gulf
eastern side
South Pass of the Mississippi
Louisiana
[the threshold reinforced light
light threshold
dead tissue
[lacking horizon
itself living and dead tissue
oil from the leaking gulf folded
into grasses
Mississippi
Louisiana
[the threshold
the threshold
[lacking cannot horizon
common giant
reed grass
phragmites australis
yellow
a fence a screen
Roseau cane
Delirious Hem
Tribute to Leslie Scalapino
Deborah Poe
“Roseau” 2 of 3
Delirious Hem
Tribute to Leslie Scalapino
Deborah Poe
“Roseau” 3 of 3
Notes:
New York Times 18 May, 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/us/18spill.html?fta=y. “Oil from the leaking gulf well washed into the grasses on the eastern
side of the South Pass of the Mississippi River in Louisiana” (caption). Photograph
This piece uses phrases from Peter Larkin’s essay and the notion of being-time in Leslie Scalapino’s essay; both essays are found in eco language reader (Brenda Iijima, Ed.
Nightboat Books 2010).
So-called today flows into tomorrow, today flows into yesterday, yesterday flows into today. And today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow.
Dōgen (tr. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Moon and the Dewdrop)
Deborah Poe is the author of Elements (Stockport Flats Press 2010), Our Parenthetical Ontology (Custom Words 2008), and fiction editor of Drunken Boat.