On Words That Do Things, People Who Don’t

1. What do I tell people when I tell people what I do? 

2. “I’m concerned with a question…” 

3. But being concerned is not doing.  

4. The closest thing in the realm of action is cultivating concern. 

5. Which means sitting. 

6. Just that. 

7. Often, I sit. Hours at a time. Doing just that. 

8. Sitting. 

9. If it’s not just that, it’s also remotely watching someone’s John Locke Lectures, William James Lectures, Whitehead Lectures, Spinoza Lectures, taking vitamins, notes, doing sit-ups, sweating, digesting.

10. Sitting is only sometimes doing. 

11. Books sit on a table. Vitamins sit on a table. 

12. Food sits well or doesn’t. A figure sits in a painting. 

13. Models sit for but not in, and sometimes they sit for on a table, in a chair, and sometimes, and somehow it’s different.

14. From things sitting. Well. 

15. Right or pretty. Cultivating is sitting is cultivating.

16. Is watching is doing only sometimes, on any given day. 

17. I watch at least a dozen cars traverse an intersection. 

18. With no sense of accomplishment. 

19. Witness to an accident: “I was watching, when the car made a sharp turn…”

20. The watching wakes up. No casualties but. 

21. Not pretty. Watching is sometimes doing by accident. Is sometimes.

22. Being watched, sometimes, being on the treadmill. 

23. Being in the shower. Watching. An idea is well. 

24. On its way to traversing an intersection. It traverses the intersection. 

25. Accomplishment. No sense in.  

26. Watching.

27. One’s step, tread, trot, watch. Watching.

28. Can be reading the books that sit. 

29. On the table. Notes. Vitamin labels. A lecture.

30. Can be written and read. It’s less.

31. Uncomfortable. More. 

32. Efficient. But mildly.

33. Upsetting. As no faces appear. It appears.

34. William James is dead now.

35. More of an activity than a personality. 

36. I watched a Whitehead Lecture. In the flesh.

37. Took the Red Line there. With friends.

38. And their faces. It was not upsetting. 

39. But all I could think was, “Why so much sweat and heavy gasping?” 

40. The closest thing.

41. In the realm of action. Is still far off. 

42. If it’s not cultivating concern. 

43. It’s maintaining it. So I’ll maintain.

44. Speaking.

45. The spoken utterance.

46. Is an imperfect technology. There’s no way.

57. To make gasping a part.

58. Of the message. The written utterance. Better.

59. Approaches. Maintaining. But I am.

60. Waiting. For something.

61. Some machinery. Concerned.

62. To sustain. 

63. One thought. To cultivate.

64. One felicitous question.

65. To ask it. To answer.

ξ

Elise Bickford is a poet studying at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared in The Columbia Review and is forthcoming in Peripheries.