the INLAID EAR

For the fuzz Now that it’s refused me, I’ll refuse hair. That’s how I decided twelve years ago to strip my head razor-clear and take air, snow and sight without the diplomacy of coiffure. Know my mind, world. It is here. Since the divorce, my do has kept a low profile, though I spot it on the fringes at times. It has never regained the glow it had when my follicles were engines, the sex machines of our honeymoon years. Now, Fine Gray Fuzz, I sometimes get twinges when I see some full-headed guy, recall you at Burning Man, my shock of orange. At 22, we pulled a ponytail. How could I ever have cursed you, Jewfro? I was young and could complain my gall out without recognizing there’d be fall out. By Free Radical , David Fleischmann

Within the one everything everything is, i have felt pressed against a dividing skin, a curtain that both separates and marries each real something with its counterpart non-thing. On the other side of the invisible schism, bardo and its shadow denizens spiral and split, folding and complicating. The exact opposite parallel reason counterbalances both sides of everything. The divide, like Carroll’s Caterpillar, says: “Who are you—unifying and zeroing— a clay body pressed into a clay background? Do you invent names so that you needn’t sing? Are you in the courtroom or on the playground? How do you come to enjoy taking my quiz? The dimensionless alchemy between sound and silence underpins them both, I have found.” By the formidable David Fleischmann, my brother.