In the House of the Hangman 1183

So I smoked and I drank and I translated Homer’s Neukia episode into Nahuatl — Auh Onitemoc Acallpa … Pound’s Homer through (Andreas) Divus into the language of the Yucatan, to give back a blood transfusion while I was … What the hell did I care about Cortez? Or even Fortun Ximenez, who was sent northward that he might discover the land of the female Caliphate (California), replete of course with gold, and thereupon conquer? Leaf split lengthwise / in the Southern California air / drifting through a hangover / “Fuck this place,” Fortun began … It began with a hundred ants among the roots and moved through such world into the spheres, constellations, and higher fields of life — the crystal and the ivy — presence and generation: my family would soon make a natural entry, feathers and shells, fragments of bone and bits of obsidian, picked up in tidal zones or the dirt of ruined cities. Time for built environment genomics. Don't underestimate the people at CERN, they see worlds fly by faster than anybody ... Specifically rendered, detail by detail: “an unmarked bottle of pink pills and a pink diary with a gold lock. The heavy curtains are drawn. The beige carpet is stained in various places and covered in clothing and other items, such as a half-eaten Eggo waffle with cinnamon and sugar on it. A dog bed: a basket with the dog’s name, Charlie, stamped in Sentimental font.” Instead of the walls there were kinds of short spikes. “How do you want to make it”. Besides that everything was okay. The bridge was out and the tunnels were closed and the elevators felt like they would snap from their legs and bodies and instead of gravity happening gravity would get completely pissed off and give up and throw something at a wall and nothing would come out of it. My third job was to quit my second job and the third job took up too much fleshwork. The flesh is like a kind of “Help, but, oh well.” The barren mountain stays on the barren mountain. Three pounds of ink stay in the intestines. Jadeite water stays in the teapot. Spring stays inside the hat. The big valley is a vast mother-of-pearl mirror. There walks the large dead swan. And there walk the mother-of-pearl children. Or the fragile founding / foundling clumps. They led the swan into a forest. Go now and eat that which you have taken from the swans. Then one ran up and cut a branch from the tree and grabbed a burning branch and stuck it into her throat. Until the swan’s flesh fell off in beautiful heavy clumps. Qualifications? She had never been to any poetry reading. Though we all know her work. She designed New York’s yellow cabs. Whip in hand, the courtesan Phyllis rides on the back of the philosopher Aristotle, who crawls naked on all fours. The illustration is based on a medieval legend. Aristotle had tried to end Phyllis’ relationship with Alexander the Great. In revenge, Phyllis inveigled the philosopher and, as proof of his love, demanded that she be allowed to ride him like a horse. The legend came to be seen as an allegory of woman’s domination of man — but isn’t there another, more subterranean interpretation? The philosopher, of all people, should not put himself above sex. To the contrary, he should put himself beneath it. Get off your ass, thinker, lest it be whipped.

[Note: Sources: Edgar Garcia, “So Whatever Happened to that Epic Poem, Edgar?”, at Hydra Magazine, 10 Mar 010; Dennis Tedlock, Punch Press blurb for Edgar Garcia, Boundary Loot; JBR, FB comments, 30 Dec 012; Kari Larsen, “The Structuring Absence: Alone with Kate Durbin’s Kept Women”, at Anobium, 29 Dec 012; Alex Savage “The flesh is like a kind of muppet caper”, in The Flesh Is Like A Kind Of Muppet Caper, at Anne Boyer; Xi Chuan, “somebody” (tr. Lucas Klein), as quoted in blurb for Yours Truly & Other Poems, at Tinfish Press; Ann Jäderlund, “From Soon Into The Summer I Will Walk Out”, as quoted in Johannes Göransson, “The Visionary Kitsch of the 1980s (Michael Strunge, poetry, pop music, Ian Curtis etc)”, at Montevidayo, 30 Dec 012; Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, “I Am A Medium”, at Montevidayo, 30 Dec 012; Perversity Think Tank, at Supervert]

Comments

[Horacio]

"there walks the large dead swan" and the subsequent lines. really enjoyed them following them.

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