Countless Little Notes
I wanted to represent the sound, not the person who was producing it,
nor its metaphorical significance. It took me quite some time to come up
with a solution: My solution was not to find a solution, but rather to enter
into the crevice between sound and language and make countless little notes.
– Yoko Tawada, “The Art of Being Nonsynchronous”
Yesterday I wrote countless little notes
to sound on the back of an envelope,
on bus tickets and coasters, on post its
and the reverse of Kitkat wrappers
in illegible scrawl. The peacock blue ink
stained my thumbs deep in the whorls,
loops and arches. A flurry in C Minor
of semihemidemisemiquavers,
musical atoms, from the pen
of a musician who cannot hear
the smallest unit to build a bridge
across the crevice between the auditory
ossicles – hammer, anvil and stirrup –
and the word. The blacksmith
and the bookbinder whose blood
courses in my capillaries
have nothing to say to the silver chaser
who obsessed with the shimmer
of kookaburra wings and left a patina
on my skin only visible when exposed
to the kiss of air.
Beth Grimm, a mother of three, originates from South Yorkshire but now calls Berlin home. She is studying for a Masters in English with Dalarna University, Sweden and has previously been published by Ink, Sweat and Tears and Magma Poetry.