Dear Ra: A Story in Flinches

“The poet is someone who notices that language, that his language, the language he inherits . . . risks becoming a dead language again and that therefore he has the responsibility, a very grave responsibility, to wake it up, to resuscitate it . . . neither as an immortal body nor as a glorious body but as a mortal body, fragile and at times indecipherable.” —Derrida

InDear Ra, an indeterminate text comprised of letters, resembling both fiction and poetry but not wholly comfortable in either category, if the task is to wake up the language, each sentence answers the challenge, stabbing at one like a beautiful murderer.