Excerpt from
Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis

by Jeffrey Jullich

As Climbing Vine Reaches Upward

I met The Subject—following a whiff of cologne.
The Subject must—perform an action
to be complete within—mirage of grammar—
to be complicit with the murky crime
perpetrated against scattered petals
                wind shook from trees,
conspiratorial accomplice—

transparent clear lucid nuance
The character looks glassy-eyed into
the climax of the plot and its story line,
the strumming of a harp and its glissando,
consecutive events invented from thin air.
A fantasia moved me to tears in my eyes, then
on a fresh handkerchief dabbing my eyes,
struck self-conscious in the face of
fragile blossoms, sappier than
Massenet’s “Meditation” from Thaïs
—upturned pink magnolia named after
French botanist Pierre Magnol (1638-
1715) pyrotechnic yellow forsythia named after
Scottish horticulturalist William Forsyth (1737-
1804) royal purple wisteria named after
American physician Caspar Wistar (1761-1818)—

Reading matter was embossed an nth into the page
dim uncertain obscure vague
which lead pilgrim to believe the road to wisdom
runs beside the night sky whirlpool vortex
reading as taught in school lesson by talking animals

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