Certainly Love Has Commerce with Vermin, but It Is a Friendly Partnership, Not a League of Discord

I don't think anyone holds me to the promises I make here except me (I don't think anyone pays any attention to the promises I make here except me), but I promised a Dischord cascade a couple of weeks ago, I didn't forget, I got pushed in different directions, here it is.

• I also promise myself I'll post on days I know are the least busy days in Blegsylvania, so here this is.
• Focus: There is much more to discuss in the architecture of fear; the poetics of space that Bachelard didn’t realize I don’t think. Perhaps its more the de-poeticizing of space. But that is, I trust, next post. For now, there are clearly tendencies at work in how public space is being militarized. The city as war zone. The gated rich at at command headquaters, where foot soldiers guard the aristocracy. Class segregation is an open concept, now, and increasingly expressed nonchalantly. Narrative must find resistance through new strategies that will express the clarity, for the low grade resolution of CCTV image is reflected in the blurred babblings of much of what passes for journalism and thinking today. The language of piercing limpid transparancy is ever harder to find. A lack of focus, in thought, in architecture, in narrative. The CCTV age.
• Ceravolo, moneylenders, Super Bowl 48.
• The rejection of shame.
• Mr Charlie meets Mr Chomsky.
• Martin O'Malley says Fuck Your Hillarian Inevitability. The governor of my state is a funny man.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• The activity of writing.
• Milosz's Incantation.

WORMS AND US

Rachel Wetzsteon

Maggots in the food, maggots in the floorboards,

maggots in the recurring nightmare in which,

lying down with a rugged adonis,

I wake to find him almost nibbled away.

Certainly signs of death are everywhere,

but love is more than combat with worms

and cannot be so glibly explained away;

I do not tremble or knock my knees

to keep the maggots slumbering below ground,

or crush them underfoot by flocking to

everything they are not: raucous gatherings,

stolen kisses. On the contrary,

I come away from parties adoring

what is wormlike in them: the unrisen soufflé,

the precocious boy’s octogenarian sayings,

the drooping lids of the hostess, someone’s

death rattle of a laugh. Certainly love has

commerce with vermin, but it is a friendly

partnership, not a league of discord;

a hacking cough gives proof of a full life,

a passing stranger seems all the stronger

when one foot is sinking quietly into the grave.

    II.

But is is this lingering horror of dust

that makes me pull us out of the cold earth

any way I know how: because I strive

for heaven in little rooms, visit you

in order to suck your blood, then spread it

over pipes and daffodils, and shove you

up to the vacant sky, where you hover

like a stone-cold, tedious statue who never dies,

you, poor pawn, are a jack-in-the-box gone haywire,

and I am a grinning humanist with bad dreams.

He Will Not Remember the Names of Cousins and Uncles

Here's the SunnO))) cascade I promised. Reiteration of duh. I have moved to the next stage of my obamapostasy: I can't imagine myself neener-neenering emotionally devastated Hillarmy's (go register Hillarmy.every extension at GoDaddy, I name it and relinquish claims on trademark, yo) moral outrage over the Democracy-threatening secrecy of the Christie administration. I read Jennifer Rubin for the same reason I watch natural disaster porn, here is her sloppiest, laziest, no doubt she thinks her most brilliant trolling on wapoblog ever since the last until the next. Yes, more politics today than recently. I'm going to a wedding in Norfolk this weekend, a cousin I wouldn't recognize if introduced but a son of my favorite aunt and uncle, want to bleed any excess aargh-fluid out of the political spleen just in case Earthgirl and I decide to get shit-faced and politics, as they inevitably will among the shit-faced, come up. For I swear I am keeping my mouth shut regardless. SeatSix can vouch I succeeded or failed next Sunday or Monday.

• The state versus John: Last week I had the unusual experience of being cross-examined at length by the State on the content of many of my blog posts here, in the course of a post-conviction proceeding. Although this line of questioning was objected to on grounds of relevance, it was not unexpected, and the State justified its inquisition on the grounds that my “credibility” was at issue. It was gratifying to know that at least one person was still reading this blog. And it would not surprise me if in the near future other authorities take an interest as well, as a result of this prosecutor’s interest. I think I explained myself, for the record, as well as could be expected in that format and environment, and as well as Heresy is ever able to justify itself to Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, this is as good a time and opportunity as any to summarize the views I’ve expressed here over the last few years, which have evolved some but not much since the last time I posted.
• Event Planner.
• Obscure Sound's Best of November, with sound.
• Bodah reads another Hejinian poem on his weekly radio show.
• E-Literacy and the Social: It often seems that autopoiesis and self-reference play a crucial role in the basic understanding of e-literature, which the established scholarship (e.g. e-literary criticism) considers first and foremost in terms of its new media specificity. This practice is distinctly contextualized and embedded in contemporary society and its paradigm shifts. In the present time, defined by capitalism, which does not leave anything outside of its influence, there is also no point in leaving the e-literary text outside, i.e. without any references to "the social" and to theories that deal with new social and cultural paradigms. The challenge of broader social theory application in this field is therefore the current topic of interest in this essay. To emphasize the specificity of an e-literary piece (as a performance, event, procedure, program, ride, textual instrument) directs us to its materiality, which is a very historical, changeable category. The requirements for full autonomy of this field as separated from the social (the claim of modernist aesthetics), have passed. Today we recognize that software is also a cultural and social tool (Galloway, 2012). In this essay, we are going to discuss some key theoretical notions on the issue of  "the social" at the present time and their application in the field of e-literature.
• The most horrifying sentence you'll read today.
• Three new Ashbery poems.
• Flowers of Abeyance.

GRADATIONS OF BLUE

Matthea Harvey

The scent of pig is faint tonight

as the lime trees hang their heads against gradations of blue,

looking at the lone suitcase in the middle of the farmyard

with a sense of solidarity. Also forgotten.

Its owner never once looked up at them and exclaimed

I was still soft-fingered when I planted you.

In the plane, her gaze rests on a flock of cloud-birds,

pinkish purple with elongated necks, rests

on the plane’s wing-tip colored pink by the sun.

Her head is heavy with this childhood cargo,

like the hawk that usually flies between or above their branches,

found skimming the ground with its catch of mouse or mole,   

or the barge that passes every day at four, its metal nose

just out of the water, while empty at eight, its sleek sides

flash signals to those on shore. Later, on the highway

a row of trucks lit like orange squares in the setting sun—

a colony of ants each with a piece of chrysanthemum

on their backs—begins to reassemble memories;

the petals become lining, the shape of the flower is lost,

so that years later, looking at an old photograph,

she will not remember the names of cousins and uncles

but the exact bend in the river behind them, the pattern of trees.

("Mere Protocol"? - More Like a Second Backbone!)

• Holyfuck, listen to my new obsession. 
• Aesthetics, morality, politics, and disaster.
• The Kafkaesque world of data mining.
• Auto-pilot! 
• Sirota brings the duh.
• Hillarian inevitability: campaign against Obama's legacy from the right. Of course. And with that I hearby proclaim I suspend the use of the terms Hillarian inevitably, motherfucking Clinton, and motherfucking Clintons (which means they won't be mentioned at all) from this blog NOT because those terms aren't completely valid but because they are (though I allow myself this one last Fuck the Clintons, the two of them the perfect symbol for all that's fucked in American politics).
• Should be easy until 2016, then, probably not so much, though there's an obvious way to guarantee there's not talk of them in 2016 on this blog, executed on my end.

• Reminder (to me): field-recordings, music, poems, aargh-free links if links at all, one weekend post, tomorrow.
• BRT!
• CCT!
• Did you know new water-heaters cost $2600? It's true!
• Wolfson's has closed! (h/t SeatSix). I mean, it's been years since I was inside, but there's always been a Wolfson's on Diamond Avenue.
• Scharpling's show on Tuesday night's on WFMU never worked for me - I don't want to hear talk on the radio - but news of his retiring Best Show is noteworthy if for no other reason that it, by far, raised the most money during marathons.
• Fabio played an hour-and-a-half tribute to Lou Reed yesterday, but listen to the show for the two Meredith Monk pieces.
• Fifteen problems.
• Sebald, for those of you who do. I confess I have not felt compelled to pick up another since finishing Austerlitz, though that's more a matter of enthusiasm for other stuff than never-minding Sebald.
• Joyce Carol Oates v Robert Frost.
• Auden and ecopoetry.
• In Evidence: 3.
• New Eno interview.

INTELLIGENCE

Tom Sleigh

Wiretaps and tapes, concealed

bugs and mikes,

                           intercepted letters

full of passionate declarations, contradictory

intelligence—

                           how attached he’d grown

to the subject’s documents, revising and rearranging

the influx of intelligence

with a sentiment, he acknowledged, almost

                           like love: he felt

the cool gray eyes of his superiors

trained on him, rebuking him

                           for swerving, for letting

himself go—such tender obsession

occasioned by the file!

                           Not quite the professional style

he or the Agency expected…

But such official loyalties

                           seemed mere protocol to this!—

what was wrong with him,

                           he wondered, that he construed

the documents to make the subject

seem a hero,

                           a bastard whose sole patrimony

was a pair of shoes and a rusted sword

left by an unknown father beneath a stone?

And yet his exploits in the tabloids,

the headlines screaming,

SCOURGE OF MONSTERS STRIKES AGAIN!

HERO FOUNDS REPUBLIC

                           were these heroic

different in kind from the rumors,

unverified,

                           of a rape, a murder?

—But to have met undisguised the devouring monster!

To have escaped the twisting tunnels of the maze…

On balance, for such a life,

                           the hero’s reputation wasn’t bad:

think of the opportunities for evil

                           a man of such qualities must have had!

How well he knew him—an essential innocence

that followed impulse, blind

to protocol, not noticeably more kind

                           than he was cruel.

But to stamp Case Closed and cease

                           gathering intelligence,

to give the hero up, almost, he admitted,

like a lover…:

                           such limits the hero

unknowingly transgressed!

And the Agency, cold-blooded where

                           limits were concerned (“mere protocol”?—

more like a second backbone!), committed

                           to keeping order, could not afford

such sentiments—the Chief of Security

felt an awful pang: that the work of intelligence

                           should lead to this…

He leaned back in his chair and sighed:

                           a forged genealogy certifying

that the hero’s father was a king; a mutual

assistance pact

                           to aid in taking back the usurped crown:

he could see them now, the wind

blowing lightly, the two of them sweating

as they climbed the cliff, discussing

                           the terms, exchanging information,

intelligence—

                           how would his own face look

staring down across the sea

                           as he gestured earnestly toward

some island, saying,

                           “According to our sources,

the tax revenues…”

                           And then, edging

the hero closer to the cliff, pointing

                           out the harbor, he’d push.

but she still looked good to me, she still looked good, and all thanks to an ugly horse who wrote this poem

         
I learned that while I am still addicted to telling anyone willing to read what I think I think if I'm not less addicted I'm at least more interested in exploring the improbability of ceasing to daily disingenuously bemoan that addiction and take steps towards actively shutting the fuck up about the addiction, I said at Thursday Night Pints at questions of What the fuck was with the static? Lamest fucking post ever, said L, all agreed. Most of the evening's talk, as always, can't/don't/won't be mentioned here. Most of what I want to talk about, I in fact said, I can't/don't/won't onblog. And then we talked about the things I can't/don't/won't blog about and things K and L wanted to talk about. K said, my sister's husband has a blog he only allows invitees to read, you could do that. That's lame and cowardly, I said. L said, that's like the family letter your uncle mails with the Christmas card that details the year of his immediate family. Walter, I said. Walter who? asked K. The Walter who gets mentioned in three sentences in Friday's post.

   

• Fine metaphors abound: Atrios links to Pierce who slams Sullivan re: Hillarian Inevitability. This is why, K, I resort to links rather than re-paraphrase for xillionth time, I said. And that was your Clusterfuck Link of the Day. I really am tired of fishing for clusterfuck links as if amassing them changes or reaffirms anyone's mind (including if not mostly mine) more than (none) just one. The concept is still in R&D, this a test balloon, yes?
• Rhetorical question, that. Day by day.
• Dissent, disappointment, and draconian rule.
• So much for that balloon.
• When schools become dead zones of imagination.
• Bleggalgazing a tenth birthday. Happies!
• This week in water.
• Aimless and contemplative.
• The books we've lost.
• Because.
• 100 reasons Baltimore is better than DC.
• Lord & Taylors versue White Flint Mall.
• Scott's Run WV, circa 1930s. I feel asleep sometime the past week thinking about Felix Grant and his evening jazz show on WMAL when I was a kid, how one of the ads, almost every ad-break, was in support of the Rural Electrification Act.
• A new phenomenology? Object>subject>subject>object>fuck me.
• How to read philosophy.
• Why don't people want to read eBooks on tablets?
• Bukowski was born 93 years ago today. Not so much anymore, but 30 years ago his novels and poems influenced how I read and write.

a 340 dollar horse and a 100 dollar whore

Charles Bukowski

don’t ever get the idea I am a poet; you can see me

at the racetrack any day half drunk

betting quarters, sidewheelers and straight thoroughs,

but let me tell you, there are some women there

who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you

look at these whores these onehundreddollar whores

you wonder sometimes if nature isn’t playing a joke

dealing out so much breast and ass and the way

it’s all hung together, you look and you look and

you look and you can’t believe it; there are ordinary women

and then there is something else that wants to make you

tear up paintings and break albums of Beethoven

across the back of the john; anyhow, the season

was dragging and the big boys were getting busted,

all the non-pros, the producers, the cameraman,

the pushers of Mary, the fur salesman, the owners

themselves, and Saint Louie was running this day:

a sidewheeler that broke when he got in close;

he ran with his head down and was mean and ugly

and 35 to 1, and I put a ten down on him.

the driver broke him wide

took him out by the fence where he’d be alone

even if he had to travel four times as far,

and that’s the way he went it

all the way by the outer fence

traveling two miles in one

and he won like he was mad as hell

and he wasn’t even tired,

and the biggest blonde of all

all ass and breast, hardly anything else

went to the payoff window with me.

that night I couldn’t destroy her

although the springs shot sparks

and they pounded on the walls.

later she sat there in her slip

drinking Old Grandad

and she said

what’s a guy like you doing

living in a dump like this?

and I said

I’m a poet

and she threw back her beautiful head and laughed.

you? you . . . a poet?

I guess you’re right, I said, I guess you’re right.

but still she looked good to me, she still looked good,

and all thanks to an ugly horse

who wrote this poem.

Sedentary Intellectuals Raised in the Bosom of the Bourgeoisie Can Also Learn to Work

This commercial, I saw it on TV sometime midday yesterday, I can't stop thinking about it. I admit I don't see a lot of commercials and don't pay attention to many after two seconds, but this one I've been unpacking since I saw it and the more I unpack the more I see needs unpacking. Since the youtube might die soon or never, here, for future late tuner-inners: the Pillsbury Doughboy, his turn in front of a long line of aggrieved travelers to pass through TSA screening, giggles in delight when fingered by a fat white middle-aged TSA agent. How happy are people who switch to GEICO? asshole with the guitar asks asshole with the mandolin, answer being people fingered by TSA agents. And I'm such a whack I think, there are no accidents round here, whether deliberate or, more likely and frighteningly, not, so seamless is the overlap it's not even considered by the applicators.
  

• That was requested by Randal.
• Remote control.
• Jesus Christ on a goddamn drone.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• Fear as constant companion.
• How important to be validated by capitalism? I confess, this is a tap-root of my bleggalgazing.
• Hillarian inevitability.
• Hamster warns me to stay away from the Statue of Liberty. No problem.
• New Inquiry's generous Sunday linkages.
• { feuilleton }'s weekend links.
• I didn't see Columbus 3, United 0 though Goff makes it sound United was more competitive than score indicates, but: new ownership hoped to steal a positive year on the cheap until stadium situation is resolved, and that's a valid business decision I suppose, but PLEASE DON'T TELL ME LOSING JOHN THORRINGTON AND LEWIS NEAL IS WHY THIS TEAM SUCKS, THIS TEAM SUCKS BECAUSE JOHN THORRINGTON AND LEWIS NEAL WERE YOUR FIRST TEAM CHOICES!
• Not just a punctuation mark anymore.
• Magnificent Octopus is today's addition to Newest Gag.
• Elm.
• Someone else who uses lameass Star Trek allusions.
• Shoot me.
• Beethoven listens.
• Holyfuck, this song:

REVOLUTIONARIES, 1929

Adam Kirsch

Twelve years on, the beard that Lenin wore

Still sharpens revolutionary chins

To dagger-points held ready for the war

In which the outgunned proletarians

Will triumph thanks to these, their generals,

Whose rounded shoulders and round glasses say

That sedentary intellectuals

Raised in the bosom of the bourgeoisie

Can also learn to work — if not with hands,

Then with the liberated consciousness

That shrinks from nothing since it understands

What’s coming has to come. The monuments

To which the future genuflects will bear

These faces, so intelligently stern,

Under whose revolutionary stare

Everything that is burnable must burn.

How You Spear It, How You Sheer It, How You Flense It, How You Grind It, How You Get It to Look So Strangely Relaxed

• The Saudi marathon man.
• I had drinks after work with a former professor who's retiring after this semester, I've mentioned him before, he does American political science in the Robert Putnam/Chris Lasch style, he said, if the bomber turns out to be Muslim, imagine the advantage Obama will take to grab even more power, kill even more people. This from a guy who when I'd say the like two years ago would laugh and call me a spastic reactive cynic. Obama will take advantage, I said, if the bomber turns out to be McVeigh Jr. True, my former professor sighed.
• We then made fun of the                 asshats in the                          and the fascist assclowns, both                            , in the                             . Good times!
• UPDATE! Standard Worrier and pressed-into-duty Newby Worrier asked me to erase and gap the above bullet. Jeebus.
• The State loves photography until it hates photography.
• Obama admits he's a terrorist.
• Dear Froomkin, it's not terror and overreaction and hate, it's WONDERFUL FUN THAT GIVES LIFE MEANING and overreaction and glorious glorious hate.
• Biohazard.
• Consumerism and the industrial routine.
• This Nate Silver article reminds me that when he's predicting a Republican will win POTUS 16 all Silver's former lovers will eviscerate him.
• Strangers and hermits.
• Zizek's tribute to Thatcher.

• Nyamakalaw.
• Buying locally grown food in MOCO!
• Clarksburg! upscale outlet mall!
• Sandy Spring!
• White hands.
• As I type this sentence at 9:37 EDT 4/17/13 Google is reminding the world who's boss, bitches and bastards.
• Dostoyevsky writes his wife.
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Translating a poem as telephone game.
• Elliott Carter compilation.
• Mining the audio motherlode.

BY CHANCE THE CYCLADIC PEOPLE

Anne Carson

9.4. They put stones in their eye sockets. Upper-class people put precious stones.

16.2. Prior to the movement and following the movement, stillness.

8.0. Not sleeping made the Cycladic people gradually more and more brittle. Their legs broke off.

1.0. The Cycladic was a neolithic culture based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats.

11.4. Left hand on Tuesdays, right hand on Wednesdays.

10.1. She plied the ferryboat back and forth, island to island, navigating by means of her inner eye.

9.0. When their faces wore smooth they painted them back on with azurite and iron ore.

12.1. All this expertise just disappears when a people die out.

2.0. They wore their faces smooth with trying to sleep, they ground their lips and nipples off in the distress of pillows.

4.4. How you spear it, how you sheer it, how you flense it, how you grind it, how you get it to look so strangely relaxed.

4.0. Mirrors led the Cycladic people to think about the soul and to wish to quiet it.

1.1. The boats had up to fifty oars and small attachments at the bow for lamps. Tuna was fished at night.

16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.

3.3. A final theory is that you could fill the pan with water and use it as a mirror.

2.1. It was no use. They’d lost the knack. Sleep was a stranger.

14.1. There it was plunging up and down in its shallow holes.

6.1. The handbag, that artefact which freed human beings from having to eat food wherever they found it.

3.0. While staying up at night the Cycladic people invented the frying pan.

11.0. Three times a day she put the boat on autopilot and went down below to the cool silent pantry.

7.1. Abstention from grain is helpful.

9.3. Their eyes fell out.

11.3. The food was tastier that way.

11.5. This may sound to you like a mere boyish stunt.

11.1. The pantry, what a relief after the splash and glare of the helm.

4.1. To uncontrive.

6.0. To the Cycladic people is ascribed the invention of the handbag,

3.1. Quite a number of frying pans have been found by archaeologists. The frying pans are small. No one was very hungry at night.

9.1. Did I mention the marble pillows, I think I did.

2.3. This became a Cycladic proverb.

5.2. Proust liked a good jolt.

7.2. Abstention from grain is the same for men and women. You put your lungs in an extraordinary state of clear coolness.

13.0. One night there was a snowfall, solitary, absurd.

6.3. And after dinner, harps.

1.2. The Cycladic was an entirely insomniac culture.

2.2. Well, they said, these are the pies we have. It was a proverb.

4.2. My point of view is admittedly faulty. My nose is always breathing. I am worn out with breathing. I suspect you have days when you choose not to breathe at all.

14.0. That was the night she looked to her soul.

3.2. Or they may have been prestige frying pans.

9.2. They painted wonderful widow’s peaks on themselves or extra breasts.

5.1. Possibly because of his blanket refusal to listen to another person’s dreams at the breakfast table, for Proust dismissed this type of recollection as ‘mere anamnesia’.

16.1. There it lay, the foredeck in the moonlight, more silver than the sea.

9.5. Perhaps now they were glad after all that they did not sleep.

5.3. That moment when everyone sees exactly what is on the end of their fork, as William S. Burroughs said of celebrity.

15.1. See me leaving you better hang your head and cry, she liked songs like that. Honkytonk influence.

16.3. All of her leapt before her eyes.

8.1. They worried about this and kept their arms close to the body, clasping the torso right arm below left, like a cummerbund.

11.6. She thought it a good idea to silence mental conversation.

12.0. Clouds every one of them smell different, so do ocean currents. So do rocky reefs.

10.2. Her inner eye grew sharp enough to slaughter goats.

15.0. She’d been a pretty good harpist before the die-off.

6.2. So began the dinner parties.

10.0. Eventually the Cycladic people died out all except one, a ferryboat captain.

8.2. Left arm below right was considered uncouth.

7.0. To play a stringless harp requires only the thumbs.

5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust.

4.3. Is it because you don’t want the impact.

11.2. In the pantry she sat at the counter and ate with her hands.

16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.

Each Head Has Two Horns That Part as Neatly as a Boy About to Play the Piano Wets His Hair and Hopes It Stays Flat the Whole Recital

What's that song you keep singing, D asked at Thursday Night Pints, is that Fleetwood Mac? Yes, but it's the Best Coast cover in my head, it'll top tomorrow's post, I said. Cross-talk about the Mac Renaissance, then excitingly vicious gossip about Illtophay that I'll never ever ever type here. Then, are you betting pints she'll win? L asked re: Hillary/POTUS16. D, K, and L think HRC's at bet a million to win a penny odds. This in response to this week's certainly game-planned balloons and feelers and Carvellian ooze of Hillarian Inevitability (Trademark!). I said, I've always said Obama was sapper (back when I was betting pints at 4-1, 10-1, that Obama would be reelected) and would undermine the New Deal with full support of loyal Democrats then a Republican Daddy would be elected in 2016 to impose full punishment on the fucking peasants. Professional Republicans, K said, are distancing themselves from if not disavowing their old white right-wing base. Who cares, said L, wouldn't Hillary do a better job of destroying Social Security than a Republican Daddy? I'm trademarking Hillarian Inevitability in tomorrow's (meaning this) post, I said, though fuck all of us for having this conversation, it's April 4, 2013. But yes, I've begun to consider the possibility that the success of Motherfucking Obama as sapper might lead to Hillary as destroyer.




 
UPDATE: A practical utopian's guide to collapse. Advanced obamapologetics. Will relate a conversation I had just now with my obamapologist friend at Illtophay tomorrow, or not, on how his obamapostasy will never be ready in direct proportion to how close he approaches it. A bleggal overlord on attacks from firebaggers (firebaggers?) and obots. Profiting from mistakes. Obama's benign sexism?  After us will follow...? Stream (Lambchop lead guitarist) William Tyler's solo album. darkblack's Weekend Overnight. The Best Coast cover of Rhiannon reminded me of the above Januaries' song which reminded me of




   
which reminded me of




   
which reminded me of




   
which reminded me of




   
which reminds me of GbV, which is where it always starts:





THREE POEMS

Anne Carson

NOT THE FORSYTHIA
             he doesn't let the herd eat the forsythia but

knows they like to be amidst its blazing yellows. He stands they graze he watches. Ida watches. She puzzles him he puzzles himself. Her old plaid sportscoat his tendency to befriend catastrophe. She is innocent and filled with mood like a very tough experimental baby. Her drawing book open on her knees. Blackish iridescent hides shine green as sharks amid the herd. A lone white one (Io) glows like an idol and is Ida's favorite. She looks at her drawing looks back at Io sets her drawing book down on the grass. They smell she says. Why they're called musk oxen he says it's in a gland by the knee. What is? The musk. Some people hate it he says. You ever see a musk ox dip its head to touch its knee get out of the way it's going to charge but Ida is no longer listening. The oxen move slowly. They chew coarse gaps in the weeds shifting ever so slightly sideways with their great brows bent and the long fur sweeping their ankles. Each head has two horns that part as neatly as a boy about to play the piano wets his hair and hopes it stays flat for the whole recital. G faintly smiles. It's their looking down he loves the steady way they pay attention downward yet are watching everything else too. A musk ox can see 310 degrees around in a circle. Like cats he thinks. Like cats Ida says. What? Look easy to draw but it's so not true. Ah he says. I don't hate it she says but G is frowning now. His wings are rising up on his back and he wants to know why.

    THAT OLD CLICHÉ

of polar adventure fatigue flooding his body in waves. This wonderful longing to lie down surely he's been walking for years surely he should stop and rest a moment against one of those satiny planes of ice that allure on every side. Cucumbers Shackleton Spam why is everything draining away why this silver ebbing and flowing not quite reaching his brain. He is so tired. Pour the honey into the jar. He dozes. A sudden violent sneeze shatters him in all directions. Oh he says aloud let's not die in the jar and with an effort that seems to rip his spine apart arches his upper back. Stiffened wing muscles pull hard against their roots and move into a lift. Pieces of ice break from the primaries and fall in a shower. Again he strains backward and up against what seem like seams of steel thinking maybe I can't do this but all, all at once the coverts jolt terribly free and the motion begins. He is rising. Air grabs his knees. Out of black nothing into perfect expectancy – flying has always given him this sensation of hope – like glimpsing a lake through trees or that first steep velvet moment the opera curtains part – he is keening down the ice fault. Soul fresh. Wings wildawake. Front body alive in a rush of freezing air. He opens his mouth in a cry as red sadness pours away behind him and the ancient smell of ice floods every corner of his skull.


A SALMON ANSWERS Ida when G asks. Some conversations are not about what they're about. The word conversation means "turn together." Turn a salmon turn home turn Prometheus a hopeful god. Turn organize his life! Do not turn betrayal not kiss. Night bones. Day sleeper. Girl. Not stark naked not stark itself. What do you want to be in your next life. A salmon. Why. A rescue. How. A play. Whose. A reading. When. A Friday. No. Is that why they call it the Rec room.