There Is No Year - Blake Butler [12]
it contained every word deleted from all other extant books, everything that every author had said aloud in rooms with no one while writing what words did end up appearing in those books, as well as all other possible combinations of words and new words those same characters could have made—
it contained instructions on how to stand on the surface of a camel’s eye—
it contained an interminable glisten—an unbreakable lock—
it contained the missing seventh and eighth sides of the Clash’s Sandinista!, written by a presence never mentioned in the band, which when played at a specific volume at a certain vector would invoke an unremembered form of light—and a song deleted from that missing album—lyrics deleted from that song—code words deleted from that language—time—
it contained a sister for the son to speak to in the evenings when the whole house was not awake, whom he would let his darkest language into, black pictures writ on black—
it contained a killer recipe for Apple Brown Betty, enabling mesmerism, enabling sight of new rooms set upon rooms—
it contained electronic conversations between Richard Nixon and Aleister Crowley, convening under new moonlight to discuss the initiation of the construction of a translucent ceiling over the United States, a silent, hieroglyph-inscribed dome, to watch the waking and the sleeping, to see and see—
it contained air that the reader, underwater, could truly breathe—
it contained how to erupt a mansion from a dot; and from a mansion, sores—from sores, pistons—from pistons, night—from night, a thing without a name—so on—
it contained combinations to every locker in a high school buried underground in the mud around the house where the son had been born, the lockers’ insides padded with a gummy, tasteless residue, no stink, and underneath that gunk, another combination knob—
it contained a verbal adaptation of the film that would be considered the sequel to every film existing and film thereafter and film not found, the paper white—
it contained various ingestible flavors, scents, and textures, imaginary numbers, sentences that destroyed themselves in their own utterance—
a mirror—a wet—a gun—
a time spit—lumps— computers—
life—
it contained full texts of endless novels trapped inside the perished brains of certain women and certain men, and in presences neither man nor woman but spread among the several, silent scourging brains—
it contained the last words of every major-league baseball player ever and the lengths of their longest hairs—
it contained directions on how to find your way into a room held offscreen in The Wizard of Oz, The Wizard, and The Wiz, and the films contained in those films, in no punch line, the frames therein unshot, unscened, unframed—
it contained containment—
it contained.
The son’s book was all one sentence.
The son’s book did not glow.
The son’s book would one day be line-edited by a hair-covered man in a small office with no windows and no doors.
The son’s book is forthcoming from Modbellor & Watt in 2118, when there is no one remaining who can see.
LAWNWORK
The man stood up above her. From in the sun he looked down. The mother could not make out the man’s face, or what about it. As she stood up to look closer she felt her body brim with empty blood. Her head went swelling, dizzy. She put her hands into the blur for balance. She saw the man move as if to want to help her, but before they touched he stopped himself. The man’s hands were very large, rings on each finger. Friction. The mother felt a minor wish that he’d come on—that he could want that—that he would ever. The mother crouched back near the ground.
The mother had become covered, somehow, in motor grease. She had it on her hands and neck and face and blouse and pant legs and on her shoes. She felt embarrassed. She’d filled the mower with gasoline and checked the oil and kissed the engine and still it wouldn’t run. She’d ripped the cord until her arm hurt. She’d kicked and squawked and invoked god. The yard needed to look clean.
The man