JACQUES DUPINThere Exists
There exists somewhere, for a reader who is absent but impatiently awaited, a
text without a signature from which the accident of this or that necessarily
proceeds, in calm, in obscenity, in the unfolding of scarlet night, silence
feature for feature superimposable on whoever, from the faceless future, over-
flows the text and lays bare its spreading and murderous unreadability.
—stephen romer
At Instants I Thought
At instants I thought I merged with a deeper reality like a river the sea,
occupied a place—at least acceded to it with stealth—left an imprint on it, stole a
firebrand from it, a place where the opacity of the world seemed to open onto the
rustle and mingle of word, light and blood. I thought I crossed, alive and wide-
eyed, the node where I was born. A grey and tolerable longsu√eringness, a
smothering comfort, were abolished at a blow, and justified, by the steady il-
lumination of a few words that fitted against all hope. We collided outside of
time, but time knelt down and if I did not master it on its course, then at least I
ordered its lightning eclipses... so I thought. The throbbing of the abyss
punctuated like abuse the dew’s o√ering to the sun, outside, on each barb.
—stephen romer
He Breathes before Writing
He breathes before writing... then he writes without breathing, for a whole
night, while another breathes for two. One breathing for all: a cord stretched in
death, in transgression, in the daily jolting that seizes and binds them round.
And laughter! Who among us? Blind from birth. Attacked by his tools. The
world lies at his feet, idle, sputtering. He is aware of it but remains still. Like a tree
in the sun.
From the contortion of the clown to the distortion of the rack, these prac-
tices train the body. Without guaranteeing against the inverse process. Sordid,
dumbfounding...
Between coma and transparency, only the hedgerow of a phrase, live, the
breath of a hedgerow, the panting shadow of a wolf...
—stephen romer