Mediastinum
I thought very hard and thought of nothing.
—Jesse Ball, Census
In one segment of the landscape, a hyena drags her clitoris
across the plains, a dust perfuming up. Cicadas pulse the segment,
a femur filled with rain. It is a lush grassland within which
the greens have sprouted through the exposed joints of animals.
This seems to be a metaphor for growth and resistance. A
single singed dollar rolls through the wind. I read
a book that imagines, among other things, a world without
trees. I wrote a book that imagines, among other things, a world
without men. The book splayed open on my parents’ dresser,
an early part of the book. People do this when they no longer
want to see information. I no longer want to see information.
In another segment, a series of weasel oil candles, such is
the cure-all in this aspect of land. Mostly the candles are not
lit. At night the moon makes the earth shine like bottle
flies, a glimmer here and there where a lachrymose flame
continues on. A god peeks past the clit of the hyena
disapprovingly, as evidenced by their glare and nod. But I
want a god to glare and nod. I want a god to do anything at all
with my debts. In another segment, my grandmother
lives and she watches a pack of lionesses feasting inside
the rib cage of a zebra. At first, she tells us, she believes
the zebra to be sleeping on her side, but the lions move
her skin under the membrane of bones.
It’s like I always say: The evenings wait for the kind of
death we get and we are so very fond of the evenings.
In another segment, the last one, we know it to be last
because a single woman is braiding her hair in a desert.
We have been here before. An animal raises her leg.
Source: Poetry (May 2019)