From Word Problems by Ian Williams. Published by Coach House Books in 2020.
But the object would not say to the subject, Object verb subject. There was no fight. But subject went to sleep facing the unfinished PAX closet, turned off turned away, in other words, from the object’s objective case pronoun. The object wanted to explain the construction object verb subject is a kind of grammatical impossibility. Also personal. Three-fifths personal. But subject’s personal pronoun or inner child should not take it that way. Some phrases literally could not be said. The syntactical problem could be traced to the object’s possessive pronoun mother, another noun, whom the object suspects was unable to verb pronoun as more than an object. Object’s maternal friend said, Another noun verbed pronoun as best as pronoun could though pronoun wanted to be verbed differently. And that literally and figuratively were embattled. The object began to repeat the sentence in question to the reflexive pronoun in the PAX mirror. As a kind of question. Until wax dripped from the eyes. As a kind of statement, the subject floated into the room wearing an heirloom fur coat with red lining red silk lining I can tell you now that it’s over because you may never otherwise touch the inside.