So this is what it means to pull an all-nighter from what forms the whispering in your kitchen cupboards. The police radio’s comforting dispatcher ignores the private detective’s stony leer & the minute hand badgers the waltz leader’s epilepsy from the doorbell into his dog’s notion of a spotting scope’s dutiful mistress. We lift off a luster & carve a miniature elephant onto the doorknob. Background blending with foreground to prefigure perspective in an etching that resembles a water ode but sounds like a helicopter blade hacking apart a radio tower.

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Noah Eli Gordon is the author of Novel Pictorial Noise (Harper Perennial, 2007; selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series), A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow (New Issues, 2007), Figures for a Darkroom Voice (Tarpaulin Sky, 2007; with JMW), Inbox (BlazeVOX, 2006), The Area of Sound Called the Subtone (Ahsahta, 2004), and The Frequencies (Tougher Disguises, 2003).

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of four books: Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms, Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk, Figures for a Darkroom Voice (with NEG), and The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth. Short poemfilms and a full-length movie about Califone are forthcoming.

Other works on Sidebrow: from Figures for a Darkroom Voice