Decadence
Translating some gauze thought, gauze like rough paper, translating
rough thought like gauze paper. That’s not an abbreviation. Stand
before a crone’s chicken legged hut in winter, become
some abbreviation for walnut and tongue. We tried
diplomacy with the water, the ivy, the spoonful of humus left
in place of an immune system. We are systems these days, these alarming
minutes between breaths. Doctor eat your heart out. Doctors eat
what comes after. We tried water with the ivy, diplomacy with the humus,
winter with alarms. We tried systems. We tried bleaching
coral and body parts. Decadence implies what comes after. Translating this
pain in my right thigh I record hundreds of hours of voice memos
between the winter I lose handwriting and the hour I lose
bleaching. The voice is a system, remove one letter and the vice
abbreviates. We crack walnuts, mutter without tongues, gather
hours of hundreds of voice memos. Write them out by hand,
by gauzed winter light, water blue and humming. Listen. Between tongues
doctors stitch together, between abbreviations and years, there in the paper
spoonful, there between immune systems, there a chicken sitting on a pillow
in translation, there a thigh, leg, vice, several voices, there between
hut and window, another name for space, for air. Listen. I may be guilty.
That’s all. We may all be guilty. That’s a system. Some selenite to clean
what otherwise remains nameless. Check before we gauze
diplomacy. Bleach the selenite to name what otherwise remains
clean. There’s no such thing, I say to Ryan Uellendahl, today’s soured
ivy. Hundreds of hours of unread minutes, translated to failing immune
systems, failing translated pain. It’s the winter, the bleached
doctors. Call after, eat water, and so on. I will not go back to New York.