RODNEY GRAHAM ❋ Alex M. F. Quicho

Some other beginning in which the sound appears cascading, where I face you and say something but it’s an open symbol ringing. On a highway flanked by waterfalls we drive and barely do we see the width of the universe so narrowed, as if in our shivering being there’s elegant iteration, a Coruscant of capillaries, laser-swish unbecoming elaborate between us as I execute a four-point bruise. It’s been ages since we’ve talked, your timeless building reaching up has accumulated just a little more rust. From there we saw the city lightboxed. You liked Jeff Wall, you said. By proxy: Stan Douglas? By proxy: Rodney Graham? Forever I can play these games of association. In monument I reckon the strenuousness of your intellect. In the desert undulating I see the inflection of your deepthroat, my heartache fellated. Seeing a rapper we shared I was sun-struck, bleached sacred. So easily do I grind on this week’s terrible dancer. How’s that for plasticity of race, you whimpered. Bitch, eat my signifier. Low slow commonality links one mind to another. Don’t act on it, someone told me, so I did. Proud problem kid. If the car stops, we walk. If another car comes, we get in it. That night your song was beat-heavy and moony, islands scored in the tide. You hefted your muscle against me and wickedly I said it wasn’t too much. Get away from me, I said. I can see your skin dissolving. So you ran and I couldn’t find you, even as I rescinded my comment. Babe, what’s your deal, can’t you see that it’s streaming? I shouldn’t have to parse it. Why bother if what we break’s so easily replaced? Your moniker’s so repetitious I can see it in your face. Baby, baby, baby, babe. If I own you then I’ll ride you thereafter. If not this road, then we’ll take another. If not this self, then we’ll take an Other. If the road ends, then we’ll swim, dolphin Daphni… Let’s not make a thing of this, you squeak, fearing circular storytelling. Too collegiate for third-eye’s drippy gism, nervousness like a boner showing, you hide it. Breathy did I sing too opiate when you meant uppers, was the playlist too harsh for the occasion? The room’s too pliable, I’ve got to pan it in my review; plying me too rhythmically you’ve got the same thinking. Only within a new state can you self-stimulate. Playing at playing with your face screen-smudged by the grain. New forms, new planes — for all its amorphousness, it ends up looking the same.