Energetic Folders
Reader goes to the archives and finds
a book of sayings
curtains opening on a hallway flanked by curtains
a diary (incl. travails on the plains, &c.)
novel placing Nephite apocalypse in space
law of the instant
Antigone’s voice
shoots branches
a fencer’s padded jacket
Reader throws a ball on a moving train
a serpent appears
(in speaking, she becomes manly)
and she photographs his head before crushing it
as a bomb “photographs”
sand—glass
wind—cancer
Reader can’t believe what she’s hearing and goes to sleep
flowers drawings
moon spiral
Equates
flowers drawings
moon spiral that walks
rocks clocks
amniotic fluid sliding carriage
zoophyta tree in the shape of the body
table
kniferest table
a beautiful table
rag in the stomach
And when she gets there, she can’t wake up
And when she dies, she carries her list to outer darkness
(parking garage with ventilation but no entrances or exits)
then braids it in her mother’s hair
as evidence of wrongdoing
Anyway she dies in her sleep, at the point when she can’t believe what she’s hearing
*rolls eyes* “believe”
“hearing”
I throw up my hands when I can’t believe what I’m hearing
which means I play a c chord, fall down a couple times, and go back to what I was doing
but I don’t know, that’s just me
Okay
Dies in her sleep
thousands of tiny zoophyta
climb to the surface of something
or give up
or continue crawling, pumping
until they too die of exhaustion
and their bodies float around
Reader begins at the end
or middles the end
ends the beginning
in the country of the middle
Antigone being the law of the instant,
Reader is the law of the long slow arc towards bed
Which goes like this:
mouth packages of noodles
mouth protozoa
teeth bicycles and horns
sunbeams in the ass
ass table
belly art
anus class
stomach money
ribs money
intestines real gold
table shit
hydrotherapy tub
coral reef
spirals
Outer darkness is not like the ocean, exactly, though it too has parts per million
curtains opening on a hallway flanked by curtains
Reader knows that and still feels dead
isn’t sure if she made it to heaven because
she is a woman
has all these objects
she opens her book:
“his everyday work between dealing with crises”
“I sprung up on my feet, and looked around, but saw no person”
“List of illustrations:
“46 - Neck Six Miles Northeast of Juantafoya
“226 - Repairing boats at the mouth of Dirty Devil River
“103 - A Midsummerday’s dream on the Colob
“255 - Signal of Discovery or Alarm
“156 - Metalliferous Veins Exposed to View”
I hate to tell you, but she saw a man then
coming over to her
“in being spoken to, he is unmanned”
“in speaking, she becomes manly”
I hate to tell you his name
it was Jesse Knight
it was Ezra Taft Benson
it was Ezra Pound, trailing clouds of snot
it was her Father in Heaven:
purple chewed up gum rolled out between palms eyebrows
tape reels bound with pipe cleaners temple shoes
inside of a transistor radio
muddy calendar
beetle wings apron
doorknob navel
metal chair mouth
The flexibility of the dead
meet each other
melt like oil
The kinship of the dead
creates a temporary centrifuge
when they meet even she feels it
shimmer in the film
between here and there she is here and they are there
right over there
the dead speak deeds
the dead are each other’s contracts huge quartzite stones
Reader finds six of them in the right hand pocket of her coat
a van and a rowboat
and a mirror
Poor Reader, in the library
of talismans in heaven
opening outwards and outwards
occupying her ceramic battle position a concordance
a cricket
living on the tongue
