Etymology
Tenable, from tenēre, to keep or to hold. The unholdable. Silence within words. Fish in the hand. When the hurricane struck, Uncle Dave drove us all to the beach. The sky was a dark lid, bolted down over the ocean. Wind lifted the water into waves. Walls of water, churning, crashing. Sizzling sand. When the tiny sharks called dogfish were left behind, we tried to grab them by their rough tails. They kept slipping away. The untenable. That which cannot be held. God of dogfish. Of warblers. Of water from a mountain spring. The words for those gods. Tengo miedo. I have fear. I hold it. Fear in a handful of dust. In the words for handful-of-dust.
—Jon Davis
—from Preliminary Report (2010)