I have a profile page on Marketplace where I sell new and used hockey skates, figure skates, roller skates, and rollerblades. My kids grew out of them and some aren’t interested anymore. Prices are dirt cheap. I had bought used skates, skis, and snowboards on Marketplace as well. I guess I just can’t deactivate Facebook.

All things must come
to an end, but I never
want them to end: I would rather keep on
an open book, continue whatever
gets me excited, replay
a lightning strike, or cast
a plumb line that may never touch
the bottom, crash
through every stubborn wall. It’s
true that I come to a point. I divide
each present from every past. But I also exist
to celebrate what’s next; I support
purposiveness, enterprise, and the intrepid spirit
of getting things done. That’s why I feel deeply akin
to vacuum cleaners, to the letter T,
to batteries, and to the short
and long versions of any handmade stroke
that could be the numeral 1, or an 1, or an I.
I am, also, an inkblot, a sudden stain
emerging below a quill pen, a sign
of danger, and a way to be overjoyed,
an antiquated firearm along
with smoke from its retort.
And I have been able to see
myself as a telescope;
a way to print
the otherwise
unprintable; a tail
for flight, or for seaside escape,
and even the kind
of anchor that stands for hope.
I am the lever big enough
to move the world, the world you move,
actions and actors,
the proof and the claim you prove,
the product of all mathematical factors.
You cannot use me
as a taxi, or for a quick lift, or just to get
yourself from one place to another; I mean to stay.
I can announce
the end of everything,
the feeling of dangling, of having
the world on a string,
or else a new day.

Stephanie Burt

With Counterclock, Clark Gibson and his band take listeners back to the bebop era. Gibson’s naked saxophone solo on “Embraceable You” brings back nostalgia. His duet with trumpeter Sean Jones on “Boptude” brings back the good old days of Bird & Diz. The trio solo (with Michael Dease on baritone saxophone) is just striking. With contribution of Pat Bianchi (b3 organ), Lewis Nash (drums) and Nick Mancini (vibraphone), this album lifts up my spirit for a long, rainy day at work.

Kris Sowersby writes:

To curate means to care, not to make a list. We like to remember those who start things, but the real work of archives and institutions is the maintenance and continuation of them. Starting something is easy, caring for it over centuries is hard.

Read Kris’s in-depth essay on Martina Plantijn, his latest typeface release.

Neither one thing nor the same
thing all the time, I am the punch
lines of jokes about copy and type, the mark of least use,
the maiden aunt of punctuation.
I feel at home in old formes, amid dust and clutter,
akin to the moths whose wings show my outline,
no good in a crunch.
Educated kids forget my name
or try to turn when, if ever, they would choose
me into a game. I am also accused
of harboring ambitions above my station.

I am still figuring some of that out myself.
I know, though, that I was made to join together
things formerly thought incompatible, to be neither-
nor and both-and; to seek a connection
that does not amount to copulation.
In Greek I simply indicate a question.
I always keep one eye open. I know what I’ve seen.

My siblings-in-arms include the tractor trailer,
platypus, lungfish, merfolk and seaplane.
When challenged about my right
to exist by some precocious reader or editor
who makes my deletion into a helpful suggestion,
I once allowed myself to be struck out;
now, however, I will more likely assert
that I have been around for centuries,
long before anyone asked me to explain.

Stephanie Burt

While biting into a Lee’s sandwich and listening to Mile Davis’s solo, I was enjoying the best of both worlds. When Black folks took Western instruments and put their own sounds into them, they created jazz. When Vietnamese folks took French baguettes and put their own flavors into them, they created bánh mì. Isn’t life just beautiful when you take a second to appreciate it?

Big shoutout to Lee’s Sandwiches at Falls Church for supporting Liên Đoàn Hùng Vương. Your delicious bánh mì keeps our stomach stuffed and our scouting spirit soaring.

Sligo town

This small child at a travellers’ halting site
(in American: trailer park)
chose to arrange
two-dozen-odd slabs of cracked asphalt,
each about the size of a housecat,
so that
they made a straight path, then veered up to the property line
in the shape of a giant, crumbling question mark.
Anything, given time, can become a fine
art. Anything can turn over, or decline,
or break, or come back together, or simply change.
Put that in your model museum. Put that in your vault.

Stephanie Burt

Đán is a natural rollerblader, but he lacks the motivation. He rather plays on his PC than blading at the skatepark. Getting him out of the house always created tensions. He would throw a tantrum when I asked him to go out. I would get infuriated watching him and his brothers fixed to their screens. I no longer make it optional to get out of the house. They need to get out even if they don’t skate.

Đán outgrew his rollerblades. He couldn’t do much with them at the skatepark, but he refused to make the switch to aggressive skates. Last week, I bought him a pair of USD Transformer skates from Marketplace. I took away his old rollerblades and asked him to give the aggressive skates a try. He put them on and he was just shredding it. He could jump over the spines on the half pipes. He could blade over the ramps. He could drop into the bowl from the deep end.

With the copings on the aggressive skates, he can stall, grind, and do more tricks. I hope he will be motivated again to push himself further. Blading can keep himself physically active, mentally strong, and morally sound.

I’m proud of my work,
if you can call it work:

I am, also, fond
of far-off lightning, and completed connections,

and and and and and and and and.
I want to be everyone’s long-distance friend,

a second-chance source for anyone’s tenuous spark.
Like sex, I may be overemphasized,

overlooked and misused, kept out of the most polite quarter.
No mark I make should ever

be final. I love the idea of public performance,
like a girl on a wheel in a spotlight on a wire.

I see myself as neither straight nor curved.
And yet I am all too familiar with

the experience of creativity as temptation,
the feeling that you are always required

to volley, that you are never allowed to serve.
Every tragedian I know is a liar:

the announced end of a story is never
the end. That postcredits scene is my salvation,

my first line of self-defense,
the board I break, the myth I use against myth.

I am insatiable, forever
and always still swimming, and on my way. I take

and wonder whether I give. I know what it’s like
to believe you have an appeal you never deserved.

Stephanie Burt

We, too, feel uneasy alone; we believe we exist
to keep you safe and self-contained, at the cost

of making you seem, or feel, like you might not matter,
or not from the outside,

or not much.
We try to protect you. We have nothing to hide.

We can adjust
ourselves to look straighter, or flatter,

or more like sharpened claws, but we largely prefer
the state in which we resemble finger-

nails, or a French manicure,
reaching out with both our hands, your cure

for shapelessness, for your persist-
ent feeling that you will forever

remain immaterial, that you are better
off that way, that there is nothing or

nobody you are ready to let yourself touch.

Stephanie Burt