the endof readingin the usa

#lemusgro

can’t get into it

it’s hard

don’t get it

it’sboring

can’t make anything

out of it

can’t follow it

doesn’t move me

draw a picture

#lemusgro

Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

        George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

 Metaphors We Live By

metaphors we read by

reading = moving = body

despair

school failure

education = commodity

know-whatvs.

know-how

consumption&

control

aesthetic experienceis not transferable

no one can read a book for you

Marginalia

I am reading a book

The words are words I like

And in the empty frame

The page leaves me

I try to tell these words I like

I like them with the penciled words I write

But as soon as I write them there

The marriage is no good

And their children run outside

And not even my erasure

Can save them now

You Ask Me

 

The other night in your bed with

the golden wash of the streetlight across us

you asked me how long we can last given

your divorce and mine will never leave us.

We meet after dark and your daughter asleep

and you ask hard questions and I think

brave and answer incompletely. Here

at my house I spend time alone unpacking

books, sweeping the sidewalk, folding laundry.

I wonder how it was decided that drying takes

longer than washing, healing than cutting,

leaving than wanting.

oppression

reading freedoms

“imaginative rehearsals”

cognitive embodiment of individual liberty