Sandra Simonds

with the medicinal poppies of June nor with Celan’s bloom-fest of dredged stone, not with history’s choo-choo train of corpses, not with Nottingham’s Robin Hood nor Antwerp’s Diamondland. Not walking on the Strand in Manhattan Beach with her silicone breast implants, refinery, waves of trash, not out of the Library of Alexandria with her burnt gardens that prefigure gnarly, barnacle-laden surfboards broken in half. You can’t build the child with the stone paths that we have walked on through the atmosphere, the pirate’s plank, the diving board, the plunge, nor with the moon whether she be zombie or vampire. Not with Delphi, not with fangs, or cardamom bought in Fez, red with spring, red with marathon running cheeks. Not with monk chant, bomb chant, war paint, not with the gigantic Zen pleasure zones, nor with this harnessed pig on the carousel that I am sitting on with my son in Nice, France. How it burns on its axis as if it were turning into pineapple-colored kerosene the way the Hawaiian pig, apple in snout, roasts in its own tropical meat under the countdown sun.

When you think about it, mostly, a cage is air — so what is there to be afraid of? A cage of air. Baudelaire said Poe thought America was one giant cage. To the poet, a nation is one big cage? And isn’t the nation mostly filled with air? Try to put a cage around your dream. The cage escapes the dream. I see it streak and stream.

There was this bear cam on the Internet. It was pointed at a place called Katmai National Park, Alaska. A few years ago my friend sent me a link to it. I would watch it sometimes but I never saw any bears. Maybe it was bad luck because my friend said she saw bears. All I ever saw was the enormous river rushing and the tall pines in the background doing nothing. I mean, that was OK, of course. I loved the sound of the river and wind in trees and the sheer thrill that such a sublime nothingness could be witnessed like this. But I wanted to see a bear. It seemed even more thrilling to be typing in a cubicle and suddenly out of nowhere there’s a bear on your screen that maybe 50 other people in the world catch a glimpse of. Maybe they are on a break from Facebook or filling out a spreadsheet and BOOM, a bear. So I thought while I was writing this that I would just check the bear cam online and sure enough a fat bear is in the middle of the river eating a salmon right there in the Katmai National Park. I get up from my desk and tell my colleagues “You guys, come here!” and my colleagues come in my office but by the time they run in the bear crosses the river, or pixelated screen or whatever, salmon in his jaws and the only thing there is the river and trees and they say, “Sandra, this is boring,” and walk back to their own offices.

All master narratives of the mind in a rowboat and the rowboat as beautiful as the swamp glowing the dungeon-state lily pads, unfolding like riddles of water, the Plasticine heads of amphibians, speckled skin of religious fervor, and the razor-blade weeds. All master narratives of the body in a rowboat at the bottom of the swamp that has no hands. All master narratives of the spirit in the rowboat sky reflecting the infant swamp, clouds of filth, soil knotted like tupelos and toppled alphabets. All master narratives of the skin in a rowboat inside a pine coffin of swamp water. All master narratives of thinking like a woman who says, 
“I choose inappropriate relationships.” All master narratives of dramatic structure in the soggy swamp, against the humid flags beating the wind. All master narratives of mythology like my son saying, “and then he turned into a very big wolf.” “I think he was very sad.” “He has feelings too, you know.” “I think he was sad because he got trapped inside the doors.” “Oh my god, there are different Fenrirs.” “Loki’s Fenrir met a different Fenrir.” “Are wolves part of the cat family?” “Hey, look up on your phone if they can change forms because these guys look different from the real Fenrir.” “See that white picture where he’s up on top? He turns huge and tries to eat the sun.” “Oh, that’s a tough Fenrir.” “I think he obeys the serpent.” “Now that’s sad Fenrir.” “Or maybe Loki turns into the serpent.” “Oh, Loki, are you a master of evil?” “I think they can change forms.”

She steps into La Roue de la Fortune movie theater off the Jersey Turnpike, buys a ticket, and so swiftly the waters roll above her instinctual visions:Plaza,Il Piazzo, creep of film over the sound of the words piano,purr, whisper across her neck, one door opens another, in the labyrinthine pitch to preserve order, the expulsion from Eden, the dark soda up her clear plastic straw, reels of rodents, popcorn, teenage workers, acne, blood and circulation turn to ice inside this mechanized paradise, where reality meets the sound of gardens growing past their makers’ dreams, growing strange and outrageous. She stops to check her phone and the phone lights up,Putin,Botox, Trump, the garden grows outward, up, to each side, the ghosts are simply plants who forgot to stop growing; they groan, shriek, quake, giggle, gurgle, stare, and point fingers at the living. I’m glad I’m in love, she thinks.

Is it Spanish? No, Swedish. What’s that? Where Loki came from. Writing about Ragnarök in the purple octopi of a gel pen, it’s the end of the world and a gigantic wolf is going to swallow the coagulated sun whole. Myth, wish fulfillment. He broke the strongest chains ever built. He was strong. He won. I’m not strong. I don’t win. Pippi is strong too. And smart. Sit with me, little one, inside this mansion of June hieroglyphics, inside the belles lettres of fluttering paper-doll tomorrrows, and mourn how we never lived.

A new obsession. How to get out of cold, metallic waters alive. Every night for a week I dream of my car ending up in a body of water. If I’m not driving, someone else is. Bob, the neighbor. My new paranoia. I Google how to escape a car filling with water. I watch videos on YouTube. I memorize the steps of what to do if this happens. First, you take your seat belt off. Late at night, I read pages and pages on the internet. What if the car lands in the water flipped over? Remember to stay calm. If you panic, you will die. News story about a woman who drives her minivan into the ocean on purpose. Horrified beachgoers run toward the water. The two kids are strapped in the back seat. One of the kids is screaming “No, mommy” — What about the sunroof? What if you land in the water and your car has a sunroof? My new car has a sunroof. You have to let the car fill with water so that pressure is equalized on both sides. This is elementary physics. If you don’t do this, it’s impossible to open the doors. This is the scary part. You have to hold your breath. None of the YouTube videos say anything about what to do if you have kids strapped in car seats in the car. I look up what the dreams mean. Water in dreams signifies turbulent emotions. If you are in your car and there is a flash flood, you should get out immediately. Even six inches of water can sweep your car away. Sweep it to where? Maybe the forest? I get nervous driving by the Gulf of Mexico. My friend Dyan got into an accident there and she said that if the car had flipped on the other side of the road, her whole family would have ended up in the water. I don’t like water. I don’t want to touch it. It scares me. I know all life was born of water. Today the government proposed to sell off all public lands. That before anything existed there were rocks and then water. I know that water is beautiful and mysterious. But why does it sweep people away? I want to push down the rising seas. I look at a map of cities that will be underwater by 2100, 2200 — Jacksonville, New Orleans, Amsterdam. I want to push them down with my bare hands.

You bring a stalk of bamboo to the flu room. Hot pink Buddha offers some bullet-like pills from his plastic fingers. Oh high above the pecan tree, my dead grandfather walks Basil and Maestro, our two standard poodles. One’s beard is oily from the wheel of brie he’s stolen from the kitchen counter. The world works. Even from here. I can hear the buzz of machines, the clicks of pens, the secretary’s repressed anger (bites the inside of her cheek), the weird light of computer screens. The world works wonders: the cashier at Kmart rings up another self-tanning lotion. She rings up August, the ocean, a string bikini on younger flesh. Nude on bronze. Saltwater fish. The sand is piled high. It makes a wave over the pecan tree. Soon a tsunami will wash away the house, nursery. Nothing left but a palm frond, white long bone. Goodbye dog, tree, grandfather with your elk-tipped cane. The world works but not today. Not for me. Fever and the walls painted with sharks and starfish. There is so much aqua, histamine. Buddha, bring me another slice of pineapple.

Because Yosemite’s high altitude lake’s tadpoles wash up in glow-in-the-dark condoms and every fish lip has a hook in it. Because there’s bird shit in the clouds. Things catch, get caught. Things are consumed. There’s no looking back. And so you were conceived here, Ezekiel, fifty feet off the Trail of Broken Ankles. We wanted to make sure no one would see. The one hiker who saw looked away. Amino acids of the flushed cheek. Dirge for eyeless things. I washed my body in the river and the river went numb— the mind sunburned. I imagine the second before you took, before the cells began to split, before that flint was struck, before the dna began to twist, that a colorless emptiness suddenly inverted and told the world that he, too, once had a mother. But there is no nest of leaves. Nothing stops. The clock in the glacier still ticks above us and on our skin there were enormous ants, the segments of their bodies like black droplets of paint pushed very close against each other but still not touching, yet taking their work with them— taking away their dirt world.

It’s going to hurt You know this So you drink tea in the morning instead of an entire carafe of coffee Like a vampire, your skin cells burn on their first sip of the sun The ringing taste of green tea or whatever the fuck kind of tea this is Describe to me in detail this so-called purification ritual I can’t I’ve never done it before My cells are exploding into a wasting lament This is the last time you will ever write yourself through this On the other side of this swamp of dark water, a plane will crash The lone survivor will speak on the radio as you drive down Highway 27 In the middle of Florida in the middle of the night after you step off the plane you see the swamps morph into the mountains of your childhood They raise their heads like giants The Sierras stare; do not go there “Brave soul,” says the radio “Beauty,” says the radio “It had to be like this,” says the radio “Difficult,” says the radio “Now you’re 44 years old?” says the radio “That’s right. 44 years old,” says the radio Continue to drive through hornets and testicular small towns Some flags raised Some flags down The god of the underworld has let you go from his hand into the empire Floridian He says you have a pure heart so pure he cannot destroy it Some people look pure but they are not He says he cannot see you destroy yourself so he has let you go and he will protect you with his anger and melancholy It will hurt You know this All the substances have got to go Substances don’t flow from your body They leave with the violence of an exorcism Spicer says once a ghost leaves your body it never returns “Horrendous,” your sister texts “I’ve been vomiting all night,” she texts “Maybe it will be a Christmas baby,” you say Something with no substance surrounds you