[WINDOWER]
by Kirsten Kaschock
I want a new wife but with all of my old things.
I am tired of the domestic packaging of woman, the imprisoned-cellophane versions. Meatdress.
I will fail to say this correctly.
In some ways, I have already failed; in some ways, I am failing continually.
And this suits me, buttonhole. Pivot and clasp.
The elaboration of woman makes windows grow in enormity, if by enormity what I mean is importance.
The adverb, said to be weak, is viewed as an addendum to, or a subtraction from, thought.
Slyly. Widow-like.
Bereft but not, emboldened by loss. Wise. Liberated from life. Sprung.
Most windows are right-angled, like their houses.
Modeled on the premise that a box is the best shape with which to contort the soul, i.e. book.
Some mini-dresses from the 60s achieved the same lines, and the Volvo.
The illusion of transparency is a problem, as it is with women, vellum.
I like to think of make-up. Adjustment to mood.
The window is thought of as immaterial — certain things permitted fluidity — the gaze and light, but not the head or hand.
Windows are what make domesticity seem picturesque, in that windows make sculpture into painting. Like said Hegel.
History flattens. She can see out.
She could move through doors and into a car, but then store, catastrophe, park, gym, restaurant-with-bar, waiting room, hotel lobby, book, brick, suffocate, twelve-step, home.
Windows can be effectively cleaned with vinegar and newsprint. You want to remember newsprint.
The hand smelling of a kind of vain poverty, of human interest.
Window — deathtrap for a next bird or birdhead.
Thinking open.
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From Windowboxing: A Dance with Saints in Three Acts
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