At the end of a sentence a period, a full stop. Peer into its darkness, a celestial sky so dark nothing is visible save the darkness itself.

Or it’s some kind of cave, an inscrutable Lascaux, a dim basement. Jazz musicians crowd beside bison hunters. Hear the shimmer of the cymbal and the erotic bleat of the saxophone, the clink of mouth-bound martini glasses, the soft murmur of warriors.

Now lean closer, look as if through the aperture of a microscope. There’s an entire city. A single swart cell. An inkwell. The birthmark of the sentence. An insect whose legs my brother removed.  You raise your head and look out at the room. Black ink from a silent movie gag circles your eye.

—Gary Barwin

The semicolon dreams.  It isn’t one, but two.  Brother and sister.  Mother and child.  Egg and sperm.  Zygotic.  X and Y.  Chromosomal.  A Bicameron over the corpus callosum of the page.  A greater and lesser brain, brontosaural.  A thought and its strange horn.  The beginning and end of sleep.  A dream of dreaming and of waking.  A hand and its other becoming breath and its shadows, a one eye open, a book.

To whom it may concern,

I confirm that I have known & for a # of years.  Indeed, & officiated at my wedding to my better half.  Having earned varsity letters in wrestling and macramé, & will be a valuable asset if drafted or otherwise conscripted into small business.  Proficient in Latin and sign language, &’s communication style is to the point.  A natural mediator and expert on mergers, & is an all-around exceptional character.

Sincerely,

 ;