from "Manifest" by Jessica Smith

1.2   The poem is a set of topological figures or features. 
          1.2.1   Words are subject to disintegration, death, and other natural events that individuals of all types face. 
          1.2.2   The words on the page represent the page at a certain geological moment. 
                    1.2.2.1   This moment implies a history. 
                    1.2.2.2   This moment entails a future. 
                    1.2.2.3   The reader sees merely a moment captured. 
          1.2.3   The "level of the page" is the only level. 
                    1.2.3.1   The vertical "reader to page" and "author to page" and "author to reader" 
                                 relationships are eradicated. 
                    1.2.3.2   The horizontal journey through the page, as a hiker on a trail, 
                                 is the only way to search for meaning. 
                             1.2.3.2.1   As such meanings will be different for each traveler. 
                             1.2.3.2.2   As such meaning is made through memory. 
                                             Connections are delayed, soundings are delayed, meaning
                                             is delayed. Meaning is put together. 
                             1.2.3.2.3   As such meaning is a compound impression of a physically traversed 
                                             space (the eye moves physically through the space as the mind 
                                             encounters fragmented signifiers). 
                             1.2.3.2.4   Each poem is a microcosm. 
2.   The page is a slice of geological time. It has a past and a future. It has physical features. 
          2.1   It could have been otherwise. 
3.   The poem and the page become topological at the same time; as the reader traverses their space, he or she perceives a shifting, coming-into-being topology.