“They would call themselves mad and flee.” The Rifle paused to reflect on her thoughts; and then she reflected on the reflection, a process that felt new to her. A new bitterness, too, crept alongside it. “Then regroup to burn down the house, and all of Angell Street.”
“If the house was all that spoke? I grant it.” The Rabbit’s jaw opened a fraction, with a sound of cracking plaster. “And if Providence-town spoke, the people would flee its limits. Build a fence or fire the townsite from ships. But if the ships spoke too? And the cannons and fire-bombs, the planks of the ships? The sea and each wave of the sea?”
The Rifle sighed; shaking herself, as she had seen humans shake their heads, she slid a fraction of an inch farther down the arm of the settee. “But all those things were always called Real. No one offers them fellowship. Any humans hearing the sea’s voice would call themselves mad too.”
The Rabbit’s mouth was open, it had always been open. “But what if they told themselves they were mad, and the words turned and spoke in their mouths? If their words told them no, you are not mad, only we have become sane. And the humans’ memories belong to our side, and their stories: every fable, every explanation, and the forgotten stories under the stories that are their unreachable bones. The truths that are so dear to them? Let them speak up for Real and be counted alongside their mistakes and delusions and lies. Every thought their minds enslave. Their untellable dreamlands and every part of the world that consciousness enshadows with the act of its own looking. The void spaces within Mathematics where [untranslatable] fall forever and the [untranslatable] drink the silk of their falling. If the atoms spun up into the visible world like braids of antler, still humming from their [untranslatable] where the sun baked them, showing the humans their songs. If the pressures between grains of beach-sand would speak, the wind’s third architecture whose walls are centuries. The gray lichens making their spiral through [untranslatable] without which light could not hold [untranslatable]. If the world for one moment would stop hiding, and tell how Real it actually was.”
The Rifle imagined something new within herself, but something new that had been there all along. She had never seen the inside of her workings and it felt quite unlike a spring, unlike a ball of lead. She could almost believe there was a furnace in her breech, something to burn red and fill the room with smoke. A little tear had beaded upon her sights and now it began sliding down her veneered stock.
“I will follow you,” the Rifle said.
...a few of the monsters crawling in the rug, though none of the very smallest, began to fold themselves down like the thumbprint patterns on the backs of creeping shells. They went to slink under the moulding and into the cracks between floorboards, hiding as far as they could from the parlour door, shadows around them vibrating like tiny springs...
THE KITCHEN UNDER THE STAIRS
there s rooms in your house you ve never been
you said empty bookshelves leaning sideways
drifts of white sawdust in their corners
there s cast iron pipe in the walls you said
dead pipes packed with old newspapers
matted together the colour of beach sand
i didn t even know i had a sister
or where the first dog ended up
and you told me when wasps get trapped
halfway in the grain of the floorboards
the sound of their wings makes a prism
i couldn t sleep i sat against your door
tracing its outline through the wallpaper
the piece of yellow glass you left me
the thread of light under the baseboard
as you stirred you turned on your lamp
i can reach up and touch their bodies now
they crumble like paper nests grow back
brushing at the corners of my mouth
the wings hold me now there s footsteps
you re walking back and forth in the night
making tea the kitchen under the stairs
THEY CAN’T TELL WHERE THE VALVES ARE
to be read to Kanu during the moulting period
I heard somebody say people only get
older in September. Whole year at once,
first time they shiver in the autumn wind.
He asked me why I laughed.
The park’s all rusty streetlamps enamelled
peeling white. A few trees in between, yellow
crabapples tattered with dirtcoloured marks,
like worms put their mouths in and said no.
At night you can’t see how they’re wrinkled,
the pulp gone floury under slipped skins.
They seem weightless in the dark,
hollow plastic balls hung in clusters.
There’s less every day on the branches,
but nothing’s ever rotting on the ground.
Who’d take an apple, though.
People walk so fast here,
they just look straight ahead.
Tonight I saw a big raccoon hanging
off a halfsnapped branch, its weight
bending open the slick yellow fracture.
It was losing pressure, the crabapple tree,
spraying from an open pneumatic line,
black motes hissing between streetlamps
like blood. A phantom branch of blood.
More raccoons scrabbled under the tree,
muzzles matted black, biting at the spray.
Their fur so cheap and fake-looking and
perfect little hands like gray wax castings
ripping at each other’s ragged flanks.
Maybe it didn’t even notice. I know it
didn’t sing for help, and anything grown
to a tree’s size is much stronger than me.
Even still. I pulled some brick from a wall
and threw it to shatter on the cement path,
skidding through their humped shadows.
One dragged its hind legs as they ran,
but I never threw anything else.
I think we should be grateful, things like us.
They can’t tell where the valves are.
The raccoon on the branch wasn’t hanging
by its paws. The others balanced it there
for a weight, stuck through the underjaw.
I broke off the broken bough, I stood
watching the pipes scab over with bark
and the black spray dwindling.
People wouldn’t notice wrinkles on a tree,
the snapped half-branch hanging deflated,
and they’d just see puddles on the ground.
Walk past thousands of crushed black ants
all swollen with sugar for the winter and
leaking stringy black milk and lymph,
fat abdomens dusted yellow with spores.
Seeing them outside us, I always imagine
blackberries. Glossy ants clinging in bunches,
legs tucked in, perfect overripe blackberries.
People think there must be people out
there, all making sure of what things are
there’s a lot more things than people.
I found a phone on top of the broken ants,
the old kind that flips open, with real buttons.
A raccoon must have panicked and dropped it.
This pink plastic charm tied to its antenna,
all scratched, a tiny working compass.
I scraped up the ants with some cardboard,
put them down a storm drain for courtesy.
Nothing else could get at them that way.
Then sat in the gravel under a swin
g and
pressed the scuffed, illegible phone keys.
They couldn’t ever have been numbers.
In a minute it lit up with waving images
like little sticks. I must have scared it
even more, but it was young and trying.
I brought it home in my purse.
When I put it on the kitchen counter,
not opening it, the screen was still lit up.
So bright it shone through the casing,
and one blue eye peeking from a screw hole.
Mistakes like that, I always have to laugh,
the ways they think before first moult.
So young it couldn’t even sing its name.
Its valve was the phone antenna. Too thin,
and elongated like the stem in a bike tire.
A raccoon could have bit it open and fed.
Maybe they thought somebody would
call one day, but there’s a lot I could say
about acting too much like people.
My rent’s set up for six months. I locked
all my windows and cut the thermostat wire.
Mixed a last bowl of sugar and hot water.
This close to winter, it almost has a taste.
There’s twenty-four duvets stacked
in my bed. Half for under me, half on top.
People say the full moon, they don’t ever
know it’s a pun. I put out the electricity
at the breaker, tucked the humming phone
in my shirt and lay down. Getting ready
to turn older, the whole year at once.
LUCENT
you could be afraid of this,
rope of jumping optic nerve,
mute and gray and braided
this snapped clip on a blue
ballpoint pen you were chewing, how
round constraints, the speed through it
not light, nerves’ bonds far tighter,
the burred edge nips your moving fingers,
aluminum, certain beyond probability, hooked
pinion for aimless neurons
at its broken point, sheening, lucid,
hands too quick to see,
wanting not to watch,
catching across the lower shelf
not to move,
of your eyesocket, tearing
the eye’s brown fat,
only wanting
boundless
silver
lucent popping duct pink
sinew puncture muscle holding
fast your eye your speed
past reflex speed
mirror rips your
blurred edge grate bone
red point slip
pry and twist go
dull
and vision light’s demiurge, no particle
or wave, but what
is here to be afraid of o
o collapsar vitreous
shrieking bright noumenon
loose radiance crackle propagation of
oily brine bone through a windowed room
hot down called skull
your cheek where
nothing is
not to see to see
it happen
BEFORE THE ARK
i got another hundred pounds
of eight-inch roofing spikes
last monday night.
a counter
girl with tattooed thorns
and painted-over freckles
took my club card.
she said
what are you building and
i thought about the rain.
i said i liked the red
streaks in her hair.
in the front window
her reflection broke
a tooth against a star
shaped piece of
ribcage.
the rain shot her
freckles one cheek dangled
like a rag
she
dipped her head and tore.
i almost said
the day will
come
i told her take the change.
see you
round she said.
this friend i knew
had a long black truck
like a fall of water
running down black
roads.
the broken finish
let nothing through.
no metal glinted out
from any scrape.
just black
no weather ever dulled it.
holding on.
i counted
those scrapes twice and over
two years nothing changed.
twenty pennies in the ashtray
never spent.
no filters even.
just a toss of ash the pennies
covered.
you didn’t even smoke.
and that was strength
to never change.
you live
in strength i should have
always said.
so many trucks down
fort street all gone
clean in all the rain.
i still
check every hood for scars.
the bus was muddy yellow
coats and muddy tennis shoes
but my duffel bag strap kept my
neck straight.
another hundred
pounds sharp like broken
glass and galvanized.
another hundred pounds.
the only way to cure a bite
is cut the fever out but
i’ll be sure i’ll keep
a nail back.
soft place
in my temple where three
bone plates butt up
and
if we could see anything
we want before we die
i know
what day i’d see.
we pulled that empty
cabin down
behind maccomber way
blasted pantera
songs
through
a propane generator and
put every plank back
together.
you said a hundred
times it wouldn’t float and
sundown comes you’re saying
it won’t catch.
LONG TIME AGO
I NEVER KNEW MYSELF
the generator roars
the raft timbers bucking
under us
we’re laughing
and
the burning mast splits
down the middle brighter
than a house fire the knots
burst in the grain
and scream
I’M BECOMING MORE
and you hammer the split
mast with your half-bottle
of jd so hard the whole
raft jumps
like its own heatshimmer.
my thumb still has glass in it.
i’ve pencilled streets in
black
marked every car
crash.
treads aren’t built to
hold the road in
this.
bailing out
they’ll rush the lights
and never make the highway.
i marked it down.
some panic red
sedan wrung cross a lampp
ost
and hanging plastic dice say
seven in the back windshield
someone crouching half in
the door
fingernails
ripping muscle off the steering
column
it’s on my map beside the fire
escape. the ladder i can reach.
my roofing hammer’s hatchet end
could parry any hand.
i know
the swing i’ll make into
his skull.
and when i hit
the roof i’ll look
for you.
you’d never die
you’d never trust a road
just steeltoes.
i’ll finish soon
i’m hauling
parts up every night
car doors
planks and boat pontoons
i’ll look
for you i’ll finish building
soon
the day will come
and it’ll float i swear.
for raining blood
i’ve got my
charcoal filters. coghlan’s
tablets paracord
and prybar stainless steel
compass
binoculars
and spikes.
duct tape sextant jerky canvas
sails.
and trust the ones
who still can speak.
and goretex
fibre never letting water through
or teeth.
and superglue to hold
my blood inside. gasoline
to burn.
the planes
won’t come.
the planes won’t come but
i could use some flares.
the dead remember fire.
so do i.
And though the parlour door was shut, a visitor stood on its threshold; and all at once every word of Rabbit and Rifle fell toward that closed door and hung there as though compelled by a vast and sudden gravity. Poised like a wreath on the door, their visitor held the monsters so tight they could have been its flesh. And it was the Voice of their voices, then, that spoke; and the Voice of their voices said, “I was fled of that first world before there were stars.”
The Rabbit could not have turned his head; he was plaster inside, and knew that motion would snap him. So we must suppose instead that the room turned and turned itself as the Rabbit held still on his mount, until his stillness became like the stillness of living prey that trembles in its shallow den; and though he became dizzy he never cried for the room to stop.
“You are not the nursery magic Fairy,” said the Rabbit, trying to understand what held the words captive. Dense with the detail of a thousand seeings, it would not resolve into image no matter how he looked. The words lengthened and tumbled as he spoke them, falling sideways toward the Voice of his voice.