There Is No Year
Page 20
34 Jeff Buckley died in a river almost exactly twenty-two years after his father.
35 El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz died in sunlight standing before a crowd of more than four hundred.
36 Pier Paolo Pasolini died on a beach that often appeared in his novels, after being run over several times by his own car.
37 Ann Quin died while swimming out to sea.
38 John Belushi died having recently filmed a cameo in which he was portrayed facedown in a swimming pool, dead.
39 Jean-Michel Basquiat died having hid many of his best works to keep them from being sold.
40 Jonathan Brandis died after his performance in one of his last roles was cut from the film.
41 Keith Moon died a few weeks after the release of the album Who Are You, on the cover of which he appears seated backward on a chair to hide his weight gain.
42 Rainer Werner Fassbinder died with a cigarette in his mouth and blood pouring from one nostril.
43 David Foster Wallace died with a massive and uncompleted manuscript found bathed under light in his garage.
44 [All the phones inside the house were ringing, and in the next hour, and the next—
45 all the bathtubs overflowing while from the soft sky no rain could fall—
46 some large laughter spurting from the pinholes in the pillows and the quilts—
47each of these hours also named unnamed
48the curtains in the living rooms changing their color and then back again, just off—
49 a ring of blood welled in the pages of the center of every instance of a certain book—
50 the mattresses filling up with hair or fire—the mirrors blanching briefly clear—
51 one white hair grown out on all dogs surrounding—
52 from all the keyholes in the house, an O-ing moan—
53 the pianos’ least played key becoming detuned—a spore inside the bass guitars—
54 some location in one wide ocean turning harder among the froth—a softest plot—
55an era without era; blank and silent light and sound
56a book that erupts water—
57a tone that shifts the lid of sky—
58a film of all film looped forever underneath the lip of ground—
59a room of rooms—
60 a sentence written in the center of the chalk—
61backward laughter in the orange juice, frothing gently—drowned—
62 translucent mold inside the bread loaves—
63 cogs at the center of the sun—
64a sticky syllable pronounced in our cerebrums, eating—
65an alphabet dissolved—
66the earth for one half second rendered flat and upside down—
67the father upside down and laughing, also—the son in 3 rooms at 1 instant—
68the mother again gushing, pregnant—the mother full of passing time—
69more light—
70 houses kissed each with new rooms, days and hours—
71neighborhoods each with new inches, walls—
72cities groaned to grow around a pucker, scrying—
73 opened;
74 father, mother, infant—worn—
75another want comprised of nowhere—
76another instant for the night]