On a Scrap of Paper I Write "Periphrasis"
I do not hoard shrinking newspapers with rubber bands gone inelastic, or cardboard or silverware or books. I stockpile words on little scraps of paper kept between pages of an old atlas. I have never said seiche aloud, but kept it for an unwritten dissertation on love, and flum, the core of flummox, which now means bewilder, but began as a mess of thrown-down things-- imagine a teenager entering a bedroom after school and dropping clothes, books, accessories and half-eaten fo