Transports

I prefer flat prairies.
I prefer to intuit the planet’s rotation from the six chambers of a gun.
I prefer the silver sweat of cinnabar.
I prefer to see a flask of mercury break.
I prefer cutting an arc in space with a coin tied to my finger.
I prefer to count in parsecs.
I prefer the helix of blown embers to a bonfire’s anatomy.
I prefer the index to the thing itself.
I prefer alkali tracks to asphalt roads.
I prefer mortal heliotropes to magnetic artifacts.
I prefer a halo of gnats to painted angels.
I prefer innominate senses.
I prefer vicarious experiences to visceral ones.
I prefer Euclidean points on a pasteboard heaven.
I prefer shadows cast by clouds on a sun-baked playa.
I prefer the gaze of a dead fish and seeing that it is my own
when my soul assumes the other side of a chess board.
I prefer paradox to ambiguity.
I prefer the skyline.
I prefer to fetch a crane from a dark shaft with just rope and pulley,
and to be mesmerized by the sudden glint of materials from the deep.
I prefer discovering that corners with scant light brighten by mere ocular ability.
I prefer ex cathedra pronouncements on the life of termites
to ethical equivocations on the life of humans.
I prefer big turbines on the beach to the windmills in Cervantes.
I prefer soliciting the name of a thing.
I prefer a two-handled drill that casts chips and smoke out of the cement.
I prefer the shattered edge of a glass bottle to a ready knife.
I prefer imagining that the dead keep secret lives in their marble metropolis.
I prefer looking at rain streaks as puppet strings
to insisting we can avoid being wet.
I prefer my handwriting’s serendipitous hieroglyphics.
I prefer the marginalia of borrowed books.
I prefer the calling of cocks from far away.

(This text is inspired by a word game I played with Arkaye and Petra, my co-fellows in the 48th National Writers Workshop. We brainstormed our favorite words for two hours on the road from Lake Balanan to Dumaguete City last May 6, 2009.)

Variations on a theme by Wislawa Szymborska