Consider
This is: the writing of non-writing. Someday
it will come . . . .1 And it’s already here —
The line that is not reasonable . . . that
cannot be attached to anything we know,
even to itself . . . . 2
Here is: a language (a syntax) . . .
in quest of itself . . . a machine for
emitting and receiving signals3 ;
a fully corporeal a-language . . . . 4,
made [t]o brush against the limit inside oneself . . . .
It is: the gesture, the word that nobody
would now be able to understand . . . .
but of which he would . . . be the insoluble origin.5
A painterly language that expresses
what written language cannot.6
No one knows how to read me.7
- Marguerite Duras 2. Robert Steiner 3. Phillipe Sollers 4. Roland Barthes 5. P. Sollers 6. Margaret Nieto 7. Shane Guffogg
Art by Shane Guffogg
“Consider” takes its title from John Milton’s sonnet “When I Consider How My Light Was Spent.”
The quotes are identified below the poem.
Bio:
Coco Owen is a stay-at-home poet in Los Angeles. She has published poems in the Antioch Review, 1913: A Journal of Forms, CutBank, The Journal, Rio Grande Review and The Feminist Wire, among other venues. She was a finalist in several recent book contests, including the May Swenson Poetry Award, and has chapbooks forthcoming from Tammy and dancing girl press. Owen serves on the board of Les Figues Press, and you can read more of her work at www.cocoowenphd.com.