Chapter I (for Dick Higgins) — Christian Bok

Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. Books form cocoons of comfort – tombs to hold bookworms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: cookbooks, workbooks – room on room of how-to books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on pro sports: golf or polo. Old colophons on school-books from schoolrooms sport two sorts of logo: oblong whorls, rococo scrolls – both on worn morocco.

Duluth dump trucks lurch, pull U-turns. Such trucks dump much undug turf: clunk, clunk — thud. [...] Such pumps suck up mush plus muck — dung lumps (plus clumps), turd hunks (plus chunks).

Whenever Helen sleeps, her fevered rest meekens her; hence, she re-emerges enfeebled — her strength, expended; her reserves, depleted.