Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Museum Of The Thing by Karen Solie

Sad storm of objects becoming things,
the objective correlative, tired of me
as I am of it. I embody everything it hates
about itself. People don't stand in for each other

The way things do. Someone
For whom Wednesday means groceries
might animate Wednesday with, among other
realities, the inability to possess it,

As one might a derelict potato chip factory
co-opted to ventriloquize one's state
of mind. It's impossible to know, entirely,
what a trip to the Real Canadian Superstore

suggests to someone else. Even animals,
notoriously difficult to work with,
whose very mention in this context invites
derision, illuminate a failure of perception

no less informative for being true.
It does not satisfy. Dear being, how might I
responsibly interpret your incomprehensible
behaviour? Where am I in it?

The imagination, whole yet incomplete,
feels it's edges. Gestures from its windows
as if into a city whose language no one speaks. 
A dilemma unresolvable, but mutual.