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Demain! Not much of a glass. So-called legerdemain padded by you know who in the direction of Argentina: a #3 pencil implacable as a first aid kit. War or pine trees. Thus nothing is spotted with Futurism and hillsides, the idiom we skulk in in honor of which differential diagnoses take a nap in November worrisomeness. Reliquary dreams. Frangipani! If you leave without controlled faddishness, shoulder to shoulder like butter, the truculence is on the stargazer side. What godsend fiddles with sadness. Careful about cheekbones, songs including the Atlantic.

M loved the little house she shared with her mum, its magnolias and mansard roof. Inside, the smell of molasses and ginger had sunk into the timbers. Water mumbled from a hand pump, not a faucet tap. Music murmured, not from a radio, but from a soft piano. All was washed to softness—the sheets, the table linens. Even the gold rims on the old dishes were brushed down to a blur. M had been a surprise late baby, and her mother was almost the age of a grandmother. There were only the two of them—plus Maugie, their cat. M grew up thinking she understood her mum. But in fact she only understood her in daylight. The night world was where mum paced with her mountains of money worries. Down the hall M blissfully slept, and down in the basement Maugie moused, bringing her prizes up to the landing so M and Mum could find them first thing in the morning. And in the morning light Mum’s money misery vanished. She never spoke of it. But when Mum got sick, her worries magnified. Her illness brought the night world to daylight, though she still managed to hide it from her daughter. Mum could no longer hope for a miracle. Unbeknownst to M, just before Mum died, the ancient lady up and took misfortune into her own misguided hands. She sold their home to the neighbors who had always coveted it. Why didn’t she tell me? M plagued herself with questions all through the small funeral—she and her mum were the last of their line—and said to her distant cousins and her friends:She never ever mentioned money! Lawyers, real estate agents, and the neighbors of course were summoned. But the deal was done. Though M harbored murder in her heart for those greedy neighbors, she couldn’t get the house back. It’s all MY fault—I should have known, M moaned. It took a long time for her to settle these affairs. She’d taken a leave from her job at the museum, but eventually she had to go back to work. She and Maugie went to the only place M could afford to buy, a small but gleaming condominium. How could she transfer doilies and dusty velvet couches with broken legs into this glare? What was home any more? She had an iron bedstead, not a sleek futon. Of course Maugie kept finding her way back to the old homestead, and M had to keep quashing the mayhem in her heart as she retrieved the crafty little animal from that basement now full of the neighbor’s traps instead of mice. Up in the condo, M’s dreams began. Each night she dreamed of a ruined house. Mornings she woke to a smell like something left in an oven too long, a whiff of burnt molasses. Sometimes in a dream a window without a wall fell to the ground in mockery. Night after night in her sleep M shouldered mountains of blame. But then came morning. All she could do was embrace the day. With her long shapely arms, she put on her makeup, donned her mackintosh, and struck out for the museum, determined to muddle through. “It’s not my fault, I know,” she said to McM, the man who occupied the next desk. “I just miss my home.” He offered her a meatloaf sandwich. She said, “I never knew my mum, after all.” M’s dreams went on mortgaging her nights. When she startled awake, there was only Maugie at the foot of the iron bedstead squeaking an unsatisfactory plastic rodent, and a monstrous stink of burnt molasses and cat pee. M decided to bake. Using her mother’s measuring cups, she chased the aftermaths of the dreams away by spicing the smells. With cinnamon, with allspice, with vanilla and cardamom, she made muffins, mousse, and meringues in the open-concept kitchen. She used all her mother’s bowls, and all her mother’s spoons, to expunge the smells—and she almost did. Meanwhile, Maugie knew whenever workmen propped open a staircase door. The cat would slip into the hall, then escape down the stairwell through the service door. And M would get a call at the museum from the mingy mean-spirited neighbors. “And what am I going to do with Maugie?” M moaned to McM. “Your cat is lonely,” he said. “Does she have service potential?” Maugie would be tested. McM agreed to help. The minute McM walked into the combo of gleam and old wood and velvet and iron, the marvelous smells wrapped around him. “You’ve been baking,” he murmured approvingly, “in your farmhouse in the sky.” But M was busy wrangling Maugie into the carrier. Shortly the cat was deposited on the welcoming laps of ancient ladies in wheelchairs. That champion purr eased the ladies’ hearts. Maugie aced the test. Seeing the ladies, something in M eased, too. “My mother is a mystery I may never solve,” she said to McM on one of their lunchtime trips to the old ladies. Maugie now went willingly into her carrier. And so the bright weekday activities wore down the mountains of dreams. Blame became a molehill. M’s nightmares became so predictable they were almost friendly. Metamorphosis set in. McM lingered when he held M’s coat, and she lingered as he slipped it on. Their hands met when they put the cat carrier into the car. But these were the gestures of daylight. Thinking she was ready to brave the evening light, M had made the mistake of inviting McM for Saturday dinner. When the day came, she lay in bed with a fever, vacuuming was abandoned, her mahogany hair unwashed. Though the mushroom soup gurgled on the stove and the mousse slept in the fridge, the main course had never been started. She left a message canceling. McM arrived anyway with merlot and magnolias. He merged into M’s mess. It smelled of cough drops and kitty litter and dust and the fragrance of a woman in a slept-in nightgown. She slid beneath layers of consciousness like the layers of the blankets he straightened for her. And then balancing two hot toddies, fully clothed, he climbed into the bed. Maugie obliged him with a space. M was too weak to protest. She woke and drank and woke and slept. At midnight M sat up and slurped the mushroom soup held by McM. Magnificent . . . And then she sank. That night of course she dreamed of a house, but this house was merely old, not ruined. It was the homestead, magnolias laden, sheet music still in the piano bench. When she woke, she smelled McM, still fully clothed at her side, his glasses on the floor, batted about by Maugie. Nothing smelled burnt. Unlike her mother, M didn’t believe in miracles. She believed in muddling through. Slowly something had risen in her, like those moons you sometimes see in an afternoon sky, night inside the persistence of day. M sat up in bed, hugging her knees, looking at McM sprawled beside her.The house at last is inside me, she thought.I’ve finally moved.

Night’s afterbirth, last dream before waking, Holding on with dissolving hands, Out of it came, not a line of old men, But pairs of headlights, delaying morning. It felt like tears, like wetted bedsheets, And suspended in it like a medicine In vapor was the ocean’s presence, ghost Of deep water and the bite of salt. Here you found your body again, The hand before your face and the face it touched, Eyes floating, feet on invisible ground, Vagueness like another skin. Sent out into it anyway, because it was morning, To taste it, touch blind hardness Like marble ruins, and skirt the edges, Razors in goosedown, hydrants’ fists. Abruptly out of it waves appeared, Transmuted from hanging silver ore, crafted Before the eyes into curving metals That broke into soup scum, Queen Anne’s lace. Out of a great nothing, a theology. Out of the amorphous, an edgeless body Or one like a hunting mass of tendrils That hurried down the sand, moved by hunger. I remember a gang of friends Racing a fog bank’s onslaught along the beach. Seal-slick, warm from the sun This thing would eat, they ran laughing. The fog came on. And they were beautiful, The three boys and one girl, still in her wetsuit, And the dissolution overtaking them, Their stridency, full of faith, still audible. All morning bathed in a dovelike brooding. The fog satisfied itself by overwhelming The meagre dew, watering the doors 0f snails, the leeward mold, and held still. And then near noon there was a concentration As if the sky tried to find a slippery word Or remember—that’s right—remember Where it was in an unfamiliar bedroom. And knew. And switched the light on. Wide awake.

For Mabon (fall equinox), Sept. 21 Our voices press from us and twine around the year's fermenting wine

A Satire upon the True-blue Protestant Poet T.S. All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey: This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long: In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute. This aged prince now flourishing in peace, And blest with issue of a large increase, Worn out with business, did at length debate To settle the succession of the State: And pond'ring which of all his sons was fit To reign, and wage immortal war with wit; Cry'd, 'tis resolv'd; for nature pleads that he Should only rule, who most resembles me: Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, Mature in dullness from his tender years. Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day: Besides his goodly fabric fills the eye, And seems design'd for thoughtless majesty: Thoughtless as monarch oaks, that shade the plain, And, spread in solemn state, supinely reign. Heywood and Shirley were but types of thee, Thou last great prophet of tautology: Even I, a dunce of more renown than they, Was sent before but to prepare thy way; And coarsely clad in Norwich drugget came To teach the nations in thy greater name. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung When to King John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames did'st cut thy way, With well tim'd oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. Methinks I see the new Arion sail, The lute still trembling underneath thy nail. At thy well sharpen'd thumb from shore to shore The treble squeaks for fear, the basses roar: Echoes from Pissing-Alley, Shadwell call, And Shadwell they resound from Aston Hall. About thy boat the little fishes throng, As at the morning toast, that floats along. Sometimes as prince of thy harmonious band Thou wield'st thy papers in thy threshing hand. St. Andre's feet ne'er kept more equal time, Not ev'n the feet of thy own Psyche's rhyme: Though they in number as in sense excel; So just, so like tautology they fell, That, pale with envy, Singleton forswore The lute and sword which he in triumph bore And vow'd he ne'er would act Villerius more. Here stopt the good old sire; and wept for joy In silent raptures of the hopeful boy. All arguments, but most his plays, persuade, That for anointed dullness he was made. Close to the walls which fair Augusta bind, (The fair Augusta much to fears inclin'd) An ancient fabric, rais'd t'inform the sight, There stood of yore, and Barbican it hight: A watch tower once; but now, so fate ordains, Of all the pile an empty name remains. From its old ruins brothel-houses rise, Scenes of lewd loves, and of polluted joys. Where their vast courts, the mother-strumpets keep, And, undisturb'd by watch, in silence sleep. Near these a nursery erects its head, Where queens are form'd, and future heroes bred; Where unfledg'd actors learn to laugh and cry, Where infant punks their tender voices try, And little Maximins the gods defy. Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, Nor greater Jonson dares in socks appear; But gentle Simkin just reception finds Amidst this monument of vanish'd minds: Pure clinches, the suburbian muse affords; And Panton waging harmless war with words. Here Flecknoe, as a place to fame well known, Ambitiously design'd his Shadwell's throne. For ancient Decker prophesi'd long since, That in this pile should reign a mighty prince, Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense: To whom true dullness should some Psyches owe, But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow; Humorists and hypocrites it should produce, Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce. Now Empress Fame had publisht the renown, Of Shadwell's coronation through the town. Rous'd by report of fame, the nations meet, From near Bun-Hill, and distant Watling-street. No Persian carpets spread th'imperial way, But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay: From dusty shops neglected authors come, Martyrs of pies, and reliques of the bum. Much Heywood, Shirley, Ogleby there lay, But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way. Bilk'd stationers for yeoman stood prepar'd, And Herringman was Captain of the Guard. The hoary prince in majesty appear'd, High on a throne of his own labours rear'd. At his right hand our young Ascanius sat Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state. His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace, And lambent dullness play'd around his face. As Hannibal did to the altars come, Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome; So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain, That he till death true dullness would maintain; And in his father's right, and realm's defence, Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense. The king himself the sacred unction made, As king by office, and as priest by trade: In his sinister hand, instead of ball, He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale; Love's kingdom to his right he did convey, At once his sceptre and his rule of sway; Whose righteous lore the prince had practis'd young, And from whose loins recorded Psyche sprung, His temples last with poppies were o'er spread, That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head: Just at that point of time, if fame not lie, On his left hand twelve reverend owls did fly. So Romulus, 'tis sung, by Tiber's brook, Presage of sway from twice six vultures took. Th'admiring throng loud acclamations make, And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head, And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial dullness: long he stood, Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in this prophetic mood: Heavens bless my son, from Ireland let him reign To far Barbadoes on the Western main; Of his dominion may no end be known, And greater than his father's be his throne. Beyond love's kingdom let him stretch his pen; He paus'd, and all the people cry'd Amen. Then thus, continu'd he, my son advance Still in new impudence, new ignorance. Success let other teach, learn thou from me Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry. Let Virtuosos in five years be writ; Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit. Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage, Make Dorimant betray, and Loveit rage; Let Cully, Cockwood, Fopling, charm the pit, And in their folly show the writer's wit. Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence, And justify their author's want of sense. Let 'em be all by thy own model made Of dullness, and desire no foreign aid: That they to future ages may be known, Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own. Nay let thy men of wit too be the same, All full of thee, and differing but in name; But let no alien Sedley interpose To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose. And when false flowers of rhetoric thou would'st cull, Trust Nature, do not labour to be dull; But write thy best, and top; and in each line, Sir Formal's oratory will be thine. Sir Formal, though unsought, attends thy quill, And does thy Northern Dedications fill. Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame, By arrogating Jonson's hostile name. Let Father Flecknoe fire thy mind with praise, And Uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. Thou art my blood, where Jonson has no part; What share have we in Nature or in Art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein, Or swept the dust in Psyche's humble strain? Where sold he bargains, whip-stitch, kiss my arse, Promis'd a play and dwindled to a farce? When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin, As thou whole Eth'ridge dost transfuse to thine? But so transfus'd as oil on waters flow, His always floats above, thine sinks below. This is thy province, this thy wondrous way, New humours to invent for each new play: This is that boasted bias of thy mind, By which one way, to dullness, 'tis inclin'd, Which makes thy writings lean on one side still, And in all changes that way bends thy will. Nor let thy mountain belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, But sure thou 'rt but a kilderkin of wit. Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep, Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles, thy Comic sleep. With whate'er gall thou sett'st thy self to write, Thy inoffensive satires never bite. In thy felonious heart, though venom lies, It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen iambics, but mild anagram: Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land. There thou may'st wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit, Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute. He said, but his last words were scarcely heard, For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd, And down they sent the yet declaiming bard. Sinking he left his drugget robe behind, Born upwards by a subterranean wind. The mantle fell to the young prophet's part, With double portion of his father's art.

All my feelings are different and this one is the most Of all places here where women once retired from the men for fear of boring them I am so bloody in my own bath of wild hairs that I couldn't possibly join you tonight for that colonial thing Heroin or whore Babylon or Bethlehem No matter what I'm followed by mosquitos Flitting dicks who want me to teach them about themselves But everything I know is contained in capsules of macha that break down in my bloodstream And I wouldn't recommend it for the fairer sex who should buck up and study up on their condition I used to feel sick for all my sloth but not anymore In wanting to please I have sinned In leaning in I have sinned In breaking in two I feel sin So Vete ya A haircut and a hard cock is all I need To govern a family My rod cutting them down supplicant on the ground For I was the first real white girl ever born in this country of flat skulls That's why I'm so cocky with my staff and my rule rock hard and inconsistent with my favor The mouths of L'Age d'Or sucked well at my pre-war stockings before cocktail hour Bells rang and trays of mosquitos were served with tarts We hadn't meant to kill them with La Macha which includes but is not limited to: a goddess religion unfaultering at the altar of shade an erotics of object-identification and compassion extending beyond the grave My sister and I drank mournfully but afterwards we still danced all night wearing quite literally bedazzled bustiers and veils of a dead boy's smoke que mala after beating their macho dead in ultra-feminine swoops How do they want us to think of them now our brothers haviing left so little charisma behind on the internet to aggrandize Such small mosquitos And though we are mourning we are still so macha as we chip the thin teeth of traitors and huff the scent of babies and slap each other on the asses and father seven times and punish the bull with its own marbled horns But though we're cocky we are still martyrs My sister says quita la macha and I'm like why It's okay to make up slogans in the spirit of revolution and she's like ok but after you systematically destroy machismo you must put his teeth to gnash at your engorged breasts for any sort of catagenesis to occur and I'm like that could be hot But it isn't the new love conceived by and for macha or is it? idk idk either i really dk So we taught our brothers all these methods of cameo that they may take a small symbol of macha to wear around their necks to the part of culture where the money used to be kept May they remember the strength of their mother's biceps as they show mercy to their fathers who are teleological till the end of supremacy which is the beginning of macha Kiss the black lips that feed you the corn hips that rock you and blight the prayers after you've said them Santa Mala Madre de Mala ruega por nosotros pecadores ahora y en la ahora de nuestra muerte Hand me my beads War without end Amén

Please god love me and buy me Read this hillock and ride me Wraith typing all day for money. God bought me today for two silver fish in a can God bought me tomorrow for bland in a pan and a card an email from Rebecca Bought four hours of my control alt delete shut down Bought a new day-section with a headstand My commerce in shall Sky like a grandstand Transact God performed me today for a half minute lucky in locker room hiding my boobs from the kids and my hair is silky and my mane shot silk gold Bought a book on economy Georgie Bataille Called about plane tickets Georgie Bataille I bought my debt today Georgie Bataille hooray Debt off my God today God off my debt in a macular hole I dream of an end like a fount to this night Run thinner and thinner and then it’s all light Macerated in signal by my go I bought my ghost I walk my ghost

Varus, varus, gib mir meine Legionen wieder Quick on my feet in those Novembers of my loneliness, I tossed a short pass, Almost the instant I got the ball, right over the head Of Barrel Terry before he knocked me cold. When I woke, I found myself crying out Latin conjugations, and the new snow falling At the edge of a green field. Lemoyne Crone had caught the pass, while I lay Unconscious and raging Alone with the fire ghost of Catullus, the contemptuous graces tossing Garlands and hendecasyllabics over the head Of Cornelius Nepos the mastodon, The huge volume. At the edges of Southeast Asia this afternoon The quarterbacks and the lines are beginning to fall, A spring snow, And terrified young men Quick on their feet Lob one another’s skulls across Wings of strange birds that are burning Themselves alive.

A ▶                                                                                                          ◀ B You — this mucky fire slathered in my mind’s frame — are as committed to me as artists are to art. At times, your voice is constant — “kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself” — fists punching clay with the aim to make me nothing more than punched clay. Other times, you’re a cinema in my skull, screening me mangled: one leg auger-mauled, hand vice-crushed, eye pencil-blinded to life — “end it,” you say, in the scene you loop: this cinema’s walls with a bullet burst. At parties, you shape a sinister play from others’ glances: “hate him,” “idiot,” “fool.” When I bloom, a sun, all alight and rising, you flatten my lift into lines on a page like Jaffee’s in the back of MAD; you fold it over and now the rise is the wound from a wing cleaved and then gilded, the bloom’s a thousand-foot fall, the sun a drain. Yet with each step the unrelenting chorus of you circles round me, another chorus surfaces to surround you: the line of sheltering trees artists grow, loamy and ablaze, against your gale, the melodies of friends whose works asphyxiate your symphony, the lessons students teach about tipping your plinths, the magic of  bringing nib to page and penning life with urgency and patience, word by word, with abandon and care. Even though I know it can never silence you, I love this inky trick because it fills the blank before you can, marks up your script, swallows you choking in a page-mutating fold, so your cruel barks, garbled, almost seem to say: A ▶                                                                                                          ◀ B Click here to fold back so A meets B × frame your life with others' lines and you line your life with love

There are starving children left on your plate. There are injuries without brains. Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day removing tiny seeds from mixtures they cannot afford to smoke and cannot afford not to smoke. Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts of hair removal and therefore resent our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas. Imprisonment increases life expectancy. Finish your children. Adopt an injury. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back, I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of_______] 70% of pound animals will be euthanized. 94% of pound animals would be euthanized if given the choice. The mind may be trained to relieve itself on paper. A pill for your safety, a pill for her pleasure. Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter but not by loud weeping. Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games are all the rage among lifers. The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry. The capitol is redolent of burnt monk. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of _______] There are two kinds of people in the world: those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities, ‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those that respond to their majesty emotionally. 70% of the planet is covered in parking lots. 94% of a man's body is parking lot. Particles of parking lot have been discovered in the permanent shadows of the moon. There is terror in sublimity. If Americans experience sublimity the terrorists have won. ‘I'm going to my car. When I get back I'm shooting everybody.' [line omitted in memory of _______]