Blake Butler: There Is No Year

chamber hung

another eye,

like the

father’s eye

but larger,

with lid and

vein and

cornea

removed.

In the light inside the eye the father saw another light— it had a name —a name he could not hear or say or see inside him, though it was watching — seeing — seen. The father could not think beyond the what.

The eye had many sides. Each time the father blinked inside his own sight within the other’s— quick black —when he looked again the eye would seize. The eye would spin among its sides and scrunch like aged skin, then come to settle centered on another side. Each new side held a new pupil to look into, and it looking back as well, again.

Through each pupil, paused before him, the father felt a force of light thread through his head—

light of photographs without color —

light of music without sound —

light of books without pages —

light of paintings without paint —

light of dance without limb —

light of speech without lung —

light of buildings without walls —

In deleted air the father saw the ageless light of those the light itself had made destroyed — one for each side of the eye here in the box here in the copy house around the father, stunned with the light of skin in skin deleted young — like those in the pictures the father’s son had been sent, the son among them — bodies organed with creation of an hour never named — deleted light held inside daughters, inside sons.

The light came in all through the father, frying.

In the light the father saw:

, 44

, 45

46

&

. 47

The father saw:

, 48

, 49

, 50

, 51

, 52

, 53

, 54

, 55

, 56

, 57

, 58

, 59

, 60

, 61

, 62

, 63

, 64

, 65

, 66

, 67

, 68

, 69

, 70

, 71

, 72

, 73

, 74

75

&

. 76

There were many other sides upon and in between each side that the father could not sense seeing, even deleted, but which came into him still.

When the light of each of all the sides was gone again in spinning, the light remained there still — it hung in gristle, caked in bones and teeth, in the ceiling of the nothing far above — in distance and in hours, doorways — reflecting air back at the earth — in all the dirt, and all the wonder— days in hours — years in days .

Inside the box inside his seeing, the father aged. Old sores on his body healed shut. New unseen sores began. His blood made bleeding, wanting. The father felt no tone.

Each time the eye shuddered in rotation a place inside the father’s head would make a click — a long hot drop all through his body— light beyond light —and then, from nowhere, his eyes could see again. He went on in this condition, a finite binary upon his body suffered in repeat:

(a) The spinning spheroid’s next side.

(b) The burst of light of light.

With each instance, the father screamed. He screamed so hard all through him and with every inch he felt his body, in that instant, become zilch. He could feel, in the periods in which he did the watching, such white-hot power-terror funneled through his blood and air and flesh that it was as if he never had existed, underneath such screaming, such massive, hobbling hurting, grief. He knew, upon each instance, that when it had passed it would be gone from him again — and yet would not be gone at all. Among all air. Upon the body. The gift ungiven in no glow.

As each click came, compiling, the father felt no terror and no rake — not even any itch for where the light came crushed against him — and in the end the father was still there — the father soft and strung inside the box inside the house inside the street inside the light inside the air that held the house among the void. The father’s body eating both himself and nothing, son and father, light and no light, silence, sound.

And now this moment never happened

and this went on for quite some time

All the son could see, where he was, was milk and mirrors, knives.

The room was very gone. Beginning. The son turned inside him, on.

Then the son could see a color, then another color. Then a hole.

In the house again, beside the box, the father felt him, in his body, open up his ageless mouth — a mouth of skin and text and warm rain — and though still now in the room there with the box still words would not come out, and there from his father body came another shape instead, a glowing, flowing fountain through his center — a small ream of creamy water which, against his teeth and tongue, became another box,

a blackened nodule

in his mouth hole,

small as a bird’s

egg, or a bulb: o

And in the room there the father could see absolutely nothing but the sides and faces of the ejection, the new shape, each side there in the house there pouring brightly, and there against his skin the box began to spin,

giving off

an awfulllllllllllllllllll

stuttereddddd

sounddddddd

With each instance of the sound, the box blew even more light, glowed as if its heat would bend it in

and from the seam of what the box was it made another, spitting more boxes from its shrieking o o o o o

another box there: o

and another: o

boxes falling out of boxes, boxes of boxes, boxes, glow on glow on glow— the mother somewhere underneath it —as in spiral, as in stun — boxes spitting up more boxes to make more boxes, blackened gifts

and as each box hit the air inside the house the house would shake and ripple, there and there, and there—

shook like singing through blown speakers

rippled like clear light peeled off of some uncertain sky

as each box fell, sent in its order, to shriek and shake upon the ground, the room quickly became filled in with the boxes — the more there were the quicker made — each box giving its own and from therein more and more, each of a light and sent in writhing, still unopened, mega-rubbed—

until box by box

by box by box

the room was so bright

and the father, any of him, at the windows

could not breathe

or sink or say or

see

& now the house was full of boxes houses

& now the air around the house was full as well, swarmed & gathered at its walls & ceilings, a silent sound a hall

& now in the sky above the house of boxes light was rising

& resizing

& now the father, son & mother at once in time together breathed—& in the same way they had grew out of some center

to the center they returned

The son appeared inside the house before the father. The father had begun to rub his forearms soft together, creating further song. The father stood against the wall, the son against him. The son said something to the father and the father did not reply. The father exhaled through his mouth. The father was looking through the room at where the son was but the father could not see the son. The father said something aloud.

Against the wall inside the next room, the mother cocked her head. She had to cup her lips to keep from laughing.

Her neck was sore. She had an awful twitch. Above the mother’s head there was a window.