The History
We talk about history in shades of yellow
Like:
the brittle newsprint with mold splashes across the dead faces
the newsreels of marching soldiers catching smoke until they burn
the photos curling at the edges — some darkening fabrics
We never talk about it in shades of green
Like:
the faces of the victims which are the faces of your grandparents
the film of soldiers in towns where those that lived were your grandparents
the darkening fabric that was worn by your grandparents
The trick is to keep breathing
In the act of keeping you are saved from destruction
That never ceasing cycle of rust stopped just before holes form
And then once kept —
your breathing held fast in a mason jar —
it can be spread over bread at parties
lung-honey — you honey
The red wasps of fortune build paper factories in your stomach
Remember?
That time at the ocean all those broken horseshoe crabs kicking their dagger fists at the air — it
all seemed so very wrong yet perfectly prescient — broken everything — seagulls pecking at
the whole mess like some giant metaphor or a retelling of Pompeii set in New Jersey
remember — how the boardwalk was being refinished we couldn’t walk on it the beaches
were covered with those dying pottery shards so we sat in the hotel room watching telenovelas
hoping for the light to just change —
Remember?
I got the flu — finally sat under an umbrella while you went into the water after they came with
rakes making zen gardens — piles of horseshoe crabs that felt like bones — there was a
strange cloudiness to the Atlantic you were feeling like bugs all over then your legs swelled up
went red — it was a bacteria that got in your blood or it was baby jellyfish that got in your blood
there are still evil black lines tracing maps up your calves that hurt when it’s cold or hot or humid
or dry —
The air is drying tonight
I went and saw the corpse flower in that greenhouse in Brooklyn
Adam and I stood there
They said it would smell like dead rats
but it just smelled like damp the phallic stamen shooting into the air above red
peeling petals in front of a line of gawkers — pornographic
below the dark pollen collecting in its belly — flies hovering
around that ridiculous big pot...
The temperature dropped and it is drying
I’m sleeping oddly again
dreaming about faces that are always murky
people I never even spoke to
let alone fucked
Maybe this is trying to imagine the idea of loss
The hushed sounds of surprise become static on televisions
As in
the photographs are short focused to just behind her shoulder
the film is catching always on a frame of a widened eye
the newspapers reprint the same stories every Tuesday
Then the sounds change into winds in treetops
The quiet constant hum of fireflies
See the stack of books that has become a pillar holding up the ceiling?
There is something like a large limb nearby
What the sounds are wanting
What the reading of this is wanting
Is the limb like something
To be taken to the pillar
Of course no one wants the ceiling to come down but this may be the result
Are we rebuilding yet?
So much promise of it — heaps — the poets came and said we will rebuild make it new — such
bullshit
I’ve always imagined the larger flowers
to feel like crepe paper — I’ve imagined crawling in one — getting inside all that
smell
living with the puff-ball feelers of pollen
at the basin of the well
tasting the pool of nectar
and rubbing on the small jutting sepals
That was the night that I laid him out in the woods
The sky was black then green
With each painful thrusting
rocks up and down your back
It would be nice to turn this into something about not death but love — would be nice to say I
was in love or even lust of course I was in sex and I was definitely naked but ...
There’s always that ellipses
That ... there is more but really what’s the point
Sometimes anything is like that
Some culture somewhere started out like this and eventually did some bad things but they fell
apart anyway there were invasions or something else someone came to power who was weak
or mean to the people or wasn’t mean enough or something like that then it was all quickly
though sometimes not so quickly over ...
We never talk about the shades of purple in it all
The constant shifting poles of it
How the body is suspended in honey
The figure of the body a cloud
How if you brush your hand through it
You can brush your hand through it
Can take it up
into your mouth —
Michael J. Wilson's most recent book, If Any Gods Lived, is available from Stalking Horse Press. He is an Editor and Production Manager for the interactive arts company Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico.