29        W/ YOU IN THE SLOW HOUR (EXCERPT)

S*AN D. HENRY-SMITH︎︎︎


︎ Listen to S*an read w/ you in the slow hour.


thick britches in the bumble pattern. unlock the swarm. nomad nomenclature for the culture crumbles. nicked nomenclature for the bulbous vernacular. nude nomenclature for the tinny taxonomy. new nomenclature for arachnid night sweat.


fall.


decadent calamity in the architecture. decadent calamity in the slow hour. (w/ you in some quiet time. w/ you in the slow hour. the comforting smell of sleep). decadent calamity in the flower moon. wide awake in rotation.


cubed palms read blank in the quake. tropical brutality, tropical brutalism, brutalist beach house buzzing sunbeat deep in my chest.


scatter drum in the improper rhythm. scatter pattern on the palisades. scatter ashes on the song you hear vertically. when I’m w/ you I can hear music; I can know music. skittish sister two step, & the garment ghost that adorns her.


perusing the color shift, late as it ever was. tiptoe barefoot to reduce the loud. & when pigs fly they flock. I awake from the honeysuckle. honey thick thieves passing glances. horn section swinging in now, I’m realizing I’ve been writing about love all along & a language that flourishes you. that we can languish in. honey haunt, the hornet sleeping on your shoulder.


which wish encompasses. a place I go to yell in order in disorder. conduct the scramble. conduct the screaming. the conduct between us. to be, to have. lazy as in at rest as in anti-productivity & the myth. mist as in the nonlinear ways which to know the soil.


commence the night hound fever swim, the silk swim, the silk drift. stuck compass pointing nowhere. compass northbound bond bending at the focal range ringing in the sonic juncture. thump thump bubble dub, stack stick sticky olive oeuvre.


hear you singing out back. all your loves are there, too. i don’t need you to tell me it can sell, just con rm what i see is real, or close enough. sharp enough. ants cast shadow, too. we celebrate each other the ways we best know how, we arm ourselves up in arms in arm in arm in herb & astrology. not to prioritize the body, but perhaps the candor. be about it. my friends are the only way i get through the night. gather where they know your name not for number, but by acreage.

reel & twist body sprawl. beats per post-representational, when i come round you act like you don’t know. seven thirteen thirteen twenty. zero one seven. one six something & a quarter.


delay decay delay decay delay decay decompose.


common celestial weather, windlock weathered wormhole. crater cradle callous count. nite fumble fungi, nimble nibble nullified. sound swallow & the chord vacuum, acapella the backmask, built in foreign enclosure.


the quadrant mechanics of I love you. the vagrant misgivings of disaster. a dissertation on I told you so. the failure to write this shit down. to presuppose the biosphere know me as irreducible. know us as irreducible.


by gauntlet & gamut. ghost moth slow money, hungry for light. considering where & how we meet, utter at the sonic shutter an ounce of light grapple burns through the buck birth.


by grammar & geography. buck back & what follows glass trample, sunspoken gold moss where lightning strikes. little lady beetle bug sunglare grimace cause they owe you some. the snowflake on the blueglass. early for the night howl. tessellating bush blur sandalwood sandcastle. screeching halt. screeching home in shimmering i know you i trust you w/ the site of me


revel in the cutting edge of hydrangeas. reveal the solar insecurity. reveal the soaking platitudes. docking at the portmanteau, an afternoon tea in silence.


talk to me talk through me
talk to me talk
through me talk to
me talk through
me talk
to me? talk through
me talk
to me talk through
me talk to me talk
through me


the secret telepathy a gateway between. energy affirmation, our friction is for freedom & its fleeting. recognition in the garble, protective in its purpose. hear we sync here we sync. embolden you & bold in you. in conspiracy in counter in continuity ad nauseum. in the garden & the noise! logic legible densities, w/ you in the slow hour. stretching time w/ you in the slow hour. our life in the sunshine & what comes after: every shivering shimmer.


sound & resound. adjacent of healing & such thunderous upheaval. nodding off into grayscapes, wrestling vulgar vineyard tangles, monocular gander gather gravel. bird obituary, orbitary study. ophthalmic anonymous, simmer spectacle simmer glitter, the esoteric erratic the ramble ringing.


lost in the cloud report. lost in the ecru enamel. off white optometry, shapeshifting condensation. lost in the seamirror. at a loss at an apex at an aranium at an altar on our knees on the earth on our knees on the earth on our knees on the earth on our knees on the earth.



S*an D. Henry-Smith ︎︎︎ is an artist and writer engaged in Black experimentalisms. S*an works primarily with poetry and photography, and is returning to an endured engagement with sound and music. Wild Peach, S*an’s first full length collection, is forthcoming on Futurepoem.

PROPS PAPER 29 w/ you in the slow hour was produced for Pioneer Works Press Play 2018, a book and music fair celebrating the merits of independent publishing and the dissemination of the arts through publication, recorded sound, and their expanded mediums.