Locus of a point having one degree of freedom, marking a crease on the skin or a geneological succession, distinguishing prose from verse and sequence from disarray, one of five parallel marks composing a staff, like a bulwark or trench, a web of wires or a network of nerves, the line is a real or imaginary mark where the race begins or ends. Take Richard Matthews' poems for example, each line curling towards a meridian, classically even, then dissipating its energy in the trough of white space before the next line begins. Take Marilyn Abildskov’s Of the First, a piece whose tone is modulated by the expert pacing of sentences–long, short, long–a veritable Morse code to signify the rapture of the new and the inevitable loss inherent in any first time. Or take Liz Miller’s piece, Moles, a narrative that posits the possibility of new lineage, non-linearity, the protuberances dwelling on the surface of the skin–lineaments–as a system of threads that links then and now with word and image. The lines that bind these disparate pieces have heretofore been nonexistent, but thanks to the technologies that are swiftly transforming sensibility, they have a common home between stern and bow of the Drunken Boat.