Craig Foltz

My Mouth is Moving

Three politicians stand before a wall of microphones with their arms sewn together.
 
The first one says, “Imagine yourself spread out against the floor of an unrelenting desert
reciting the poems of a stranger. Imagine the poems are composed of subordinate clauses and non-specific imagery.”
 
When she speaks the sound of tape hiss. Sacramento or Riverside. True leaves part for nobody’s inarticulation.
 
 
***
 
 
The second politician says, “Imagine yourself undergoing enhanced interrogation
techniques.” Shadowless, but chained. Circled, but mystified.
 
Verification of his statements cannot occur without authenticating details. For instance, the process by which flour is extracted from acorns.
 
The pairing of huckleberries and sage. Elderberry and synthetic ethers.
 
 
***
 
 
The third politician isn’t a politician at all, but sets his taxonomies within a mold of crumbling
masonry. He has the face of a waterlogged seed pod and the color of a root vegetable that has never been exposed to light. If light is the right word here.
 
He says, “The good news is that your statements are non-corroborated. The bad news is that you are believed.”
 
 
***
 
 
Inclined tower of books breeds sullen destruction. One knows nothing about the future and
misuses the word bucolic. Another creates overambitious experiments with traps and pulleys meant to reduce our strange halos to cotter pins and cotyledons.
 
 
***
 
Is it strange to think you met underwater? Is it odd to initiate a wider group review when you live in sarcophogul igloos and rub your feet together to produce heat? Of course not.
 
We know nothing about the future except that days will be assimilated and that there will be fluctuations in temperature.
 
Some desire the glory of screen time. Others build towers of brick and curtains of metal. How curious, then, the way in which an image becomes inconclusive.
 
 
 
--
Craig Foltz is a writer and photographer who lives on the slopes of a dormant volcano in Auckland, New Zealand. His most recent collection of fiction, We Used to be Everywhere available from Ugly Ducking Presse. For more information see: www.craigfoltz.com