Empty Set

EMPTY SET

Vacant name tag, middle of an unwritten;

coaxial o rolls out from its shape:

language unoccupied but

designed by inaudible flashes of colorless.

In the depths of paper, underneath

text; what was before a page blank,

another layer of spotless pulp. Circle

out of its dermus ink: a human bulb, skull light.

Where the substance of thought

enlightens the narrative of bone,

skeleton according to speech;

lack of being alives within empty set.

Like a shape of a sound before

ink forms, before structured print

writhes through and out. Curl brackets

enclose sibilant; an s, a phonetic infection.

But a writer corrects what it hears, forgets

in there where ink absorbs paper, evolves

into written fungic. A spore of alphabet cannot

be sterilized with revision; so one creates

a circumference around the letter

to entrap, to press its outbreak of silence.


Orlando White