I open my
eyes & see
Geshtinanna, sister
of wine, standing
there
hi how are
you, I say? I
am not good, she
tells me, my brother
Dumuzid married the
goddess Inanna, one
day she came
home from hell with
a flock of demons Dumuzid
hardly noticed & just
said hi, he was watching
some dancers but really,
who doesn’t say whoa
demons! & so
Inanna got mad & had
him dragged to
hell in her place, now
he’s dead which means I
have to keep watch over
the earth half the year while
everything goes to
shit because only
he can bring flower honestly
33
would it have killed him
just to say wow demons?
anyway how are you
I’m fine, I say, the ocean
hasn’t stopped its
music in sixty trillion
years and we found a
way to make illness
into a tiny animal tell
me more about your brother
what’s to tell? he dies &
comes to life again, every
year, they’ll argue what
it means, how he’s like
anyone else who dies &
comes back they’ll
ask if he was a king, was
dismembered, if he was
a raiser of ghosts, the
hand that plucked the
string of the sea
no one gives a
shit about the dry
season or torture but
when you wake up one
morning & you’re a
34
cactus I’ll be off getting
high with the north
star or something
and we’ll just see
how you like it
35
“oxen wild like bellowed land”
after most things have happened, Chaon appears.
he’s filth, a mishmash theophage guzzling chaos
out of the city, draining it to linearity. doors become
invisible, alphabets realign their orders under the
meshes of our speech. I will mutely scowl says the sun.
I will turn the chrysler building inside out.
he drank so much chaos they called him Chaon,
of course. he took all but two of every household
(as though walls even existed, or remembered light)
and lived in the sky with them. open air pivoting,
invisible embouchure into a body of contradictions.
or into nobody if that’s who we are. I was righteous
out of my age, says Chaon. I soldered together
the seams of the sky, I blew breath into the city’s
gridded syntax. weeks without rain. flesh in no
number. recombinant grammars flash in the
skyline. the doorway. a language all breath
conspires in. bandwidths enlacing to form noise.
36
Thoth the ancient
egyptian god of
wisdom who is
also a white-haired
baboon and
sometimes an ibis
walks lankily over
I will be honest, he
tells me, because that’s
how I am I have read
what you’re doing
it doesn’t make
sense to me
o is that all, I ask? me
either but I power
thru, nothing really
makes sense like
ever, the air full
of imaginary
money and some
people own music
or own medicine,
our bodies breaking
into pieces all
around while we
just fight about the
right way to fall or
be taken apart
37
I’ve seen you do it,
Thoth says, even
gave you writing so
you’d have another
kind of body to
escape to, and you
hid everything there,
your inquiries into
love, rules for making
particular kinds of
soups, everything
you know about what
glass does to light,
where to put hands
in the dark, your
fears and memories
of an earlier landscape
you made all your
houses out of writing,
every number has an
asshole and the
numbers and the
assholes you converted
to writing, tree and
door, propeller jet
and dim glow of
minerals, all of this
you concealed within
the endless conceptual
38
folds of the writing
I gave you
still, I say, we managed
a lot — you could
live in the woods and
get jewelry brought
by uniformed agents
of the state, and there
were stations where
people sold pizza and
explosive oil from
underground vats
thru a big rubber
proboscis. it made
no sense and we
loved it. the days
felt electric. music
became razor-like. plus
old fruit makes you
dizzy because ps
you’re a monkey
life really wasn’t bad
and you, I ask, what
did you spend that
time doing? I did so
much, he says, got
married to equilibrium,
gathered all the
39
ink I could, tried my
best to relate to
you but there was
no body any of
you would stay
put in
you loss that
perceives
we look back
over the hills
and Thoth gets
sad, in a way, he
says, this is all
my fault, writing
is the gift you
didn’t survive
but we achieved so
much, I tell him: pinball, the
poems of Bernadette
Mayer, the music of
Lonnie Johnson, frozen
pirogi, little rooms that
glide between mountains
for a little while, he
says, sure, I mean I
used to be the freaking moon
40
but you don’t hear
me bragging about it
41
pejorocracy it’s an insane process
cacaphonocracy the billboards tuned
to full bleed radiocracy the country of
your heart corporocracy its bodies
bound by vacant interests you know
normal boilerplatocracy. leocracy.
guacamocracy how are things in
the digital surround right now?
cryptocrats take forever in the bathroom.
we try to make a book to the exact
dimensions of our complicity
42
