Too many fled
Spillways mouths
Oceans swill
May flies
Swamped
Too many words
Enough
Said it all
Spoke too much
Tongue tied
Talons claws syllables
Ships set sail
Anchors aweigh
Adrift such flame
Molten metal
Scimitar swiftness
Swallows at dusk
A vernacular
Unspeeched
I've said it all
And then some
We've said too much
And then some
Gongs of regret
Soaking it in
The choir of silence
Rehearsing
a brown hare (liebre marrón)
dances
diaphanous (diáfano)
as willow wind (viento del sauce)
whispers
to Ganymede (Ganimdes)
perched on a silver birch (abedul plateado)
whose broad bean (haba)
of muted lavender (lavanda apagado)
waits
* I walked into a hardware store and randomly collected paint samples. Pratt & Lambert Paints calls the strips of paper Color Narrative (tm). Then I randomly chose from my deck of 7 and arranged the words as above, with 11 words of my own added.
That was a rumor of crocus
Creeping under the myrtle
A promissory note
In the key of hope
Aside the stale snow
Stubborn against melt
That was a robin
No doubt at all
Its singular song
Perched on a wire
Strung from Kyiv
To Kalamazoo
Its clementine breast
Battered and beating
That was sunlight
They say piercing
Cumulus and doubt
A miracle or mirage
They say mingling
Shadow and blaze
1. The Search: a biography of Leo Tolstoy -- Sara Newton Carroll
2. The Buddha in the Attic -- Julie Otsuka
3. Silverview -- John le Carré
4. Snow Angels -- Stewart O'Nan
5. The Blue Guitar -- John Banville
6. Great House -- Nicole Krauss
7. Glory -- Vladimir Nabokov
8. You Think It, I'll Say It -- Curtis Sittenfeld
9. Ethan Frome -- Edith Wharton
10. Life Without Children -- Roddy Doyle
11. Why Peacocks? an unlikely search for meaning in the world's most magnificent bird -- Sean Flynn
12. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos -- Dominic Smith
13. The Employees -- Olga Ravn, tr. by Martin Aitken
14. Wayward -- Dana Spiotta
15. Year of the Monkey -- Patti Smith
16. By Nightfall -- Michael Cunningham
17. Ocean State -- Stewart O'Nan
18. Time Is a Mother -- Ocean Vuong
19. Forest Dark -- Nicole Krauss
20. Gap Creek the story of a Marriage -- Robert Morgan
21. Leave the World Behind -- Rumaan Alam
22. The Vanishing Act of Esmé Lennox -- Maggie O'Farrell
23. The Lost Family: how DNA testingis upending who we are -- Libby Copeland
24. The Black Snow -- Paul Lynch
25. Elegy for April -- Benjamin Black
26. Learning to Talk -- Hilary Mantel
27. Something to Do with Paying Attention -- David Foster Wallace
28. Enon -- Paul Harding
29. Whereabouts -- Jhumpa Lahiri
30. Dreaming in Cuban -- Cristina Garcia
31. Unaccustomed Earth -- Jhumpa Lahiri
32. Ghost Light -- Joseph O'Connor
33. Eventide -- Kent Haruf
34. Noboy's Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness -- Roy Richard Grinker
35. The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri -- David Bajo
36. The Slap -- Christos Tsiolkas
37. The Comedian -- Joseph O'Connor
