They Will Sew the Blue Sail

Paper Jam Rescues | Brenda Hillman

(to send something to Angie & Laura, i used 2 printer jam rescues as my old printer was breaking down; the first printer jam happened when i was trying to print out something entitled “rescued document,” which turned out to be thousands of question marks produced by the computer without my input. the rest of the text was, as you see, taped on there by some thieves.

– maybe just let's start with vitamin shadow. / – you just stole that from brenda's notebook / – she won't care, she's pretty nutty at this point / – a.k.a. you stole it / – that's how I'm interpreting the trash thing. / – she might of planned on using vitamin shadow. / – just start, vitamin shadow, we were guilty of so much / – you can't just go in other people's stuff and steal their shit and put your name on it / – I don't have a name diluted bitumen has a name. dil bit. / – that's a nature poem. / – i just found a list of objects they threw away // handwriting, snakeskin, leaves, seepage, weeds, pencils, the Amazon pens, time, stranded, Edward Snowden, job search, smoker, North Dakota, God, literature, solitude, veterans, ethics, beauty, Glass Steagall, shit, Miranda rights, Miranda, carapace, orange rinds, circularity, diatoma, tanks in Iraq, children, six-pack rings, light, jammed printer paper, nail clippings, species, the hour after sex, magic, bacteria, Kentucky, blood, public school, nuclear waste, Pluto, the lyric, time in L.A., vitamin shadow
There's a shiver of rivers … that melts when we are faster / storms split the … signs lava … from night … marshes … that dipped like pink nuns we kept the word 'beauty' in mind for Shas… / that upside-down bride 75% of H2O slides from north of Tahoe 1685 feet deep high into nothingness … Waterfalls / water near petroaphypla… in lava caves / ppch-uh / ppah-uh / puth-uh / puch-uh / Beetle flower. Beetle-flower such …

a second printer jam occurred when i was trying to print a poem on dams from Practical Water to send to Jared Stanley. after extracting the page from the printer, i taped an old tea-stained draft of a poem i never completed for that book which i still had in my folder. it was occasioned by trying to imitate drips in a lava beds cave in northern California. b hillman July 16, 2013)