play

• needle the arm comes down slow. you do this by hand and the hand is steady because it has done this before.
• the bolt the stepped leader comes down in fits. fifty meters at a time, then a pause of microseconds, then another fifty.
• the kettle the kettle screams loudest before it boils.
• the stones inside each ear there is a patch of gel with small calcium-carbonate stones stuck to it.
• the tongue the tongue has no bone in it. neither does the elephant's trunk, or the octopus's arm.
• the lewis a lewis is the three-piece iron fitting masons use to lift a finished block of stone.
• the kerf the kerf is the width of the saw cut. not the line, not the place the line went — the slot the blade makes in passing.
• the gnomon the gnomon is the stick on a sundial. it does not move. the rest of the dial is calibrated to its silence.
• the counterweight a double-hung window is light to lift not because the sash is light but because hidden in the wall is a counterweight.
• the eye look at it. it looks back.
• the saw drag across. the slot is wider than the line.