LXII.
The new land is fertile and brims with 7-11s.
Oases of Mountain Dew Code Black for three dollars ninety-nine.
We let our horses drink and make good time
galloping across the sixteen-lane Flanfasnic Connector.
We sleep in the median strip, making lean-tos
with discarded Southern Bacon Double wrappers.
The scent of their tangy Southern-style sauce wafts through our dreams,
which thunder with salt, sugar, and saturated fats.
I awaken when a semi the size of Delaware streaks by.
The stars are bigger here and crowd the Earth,
but even so I am still too small to reach up and turn them off.
LXII.
Word Count: 92
Added: 03/31/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
LXIII.
Word Count: 107
Added: 04/01/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
LXIII.
We’re watching the TV from the vents of the pediatric hospital waiting room.
Drag queens glide by like the masts of 17th century schooners.
They have names like Tilly de Fields and Henrietta Kissingher.
They are here to explain to the children that we are all
free to be whoever we want to be, and also the tumor is inoperable.
We crouch in the vents, in negative pressure and sterile booties.
Our tiny footprints leave messages in Morse code in the dust:
variants of “Kilroy was here” lost in the tidal flow of ventilation.
On television there's a commercial for something called Fuck Off.
The nurses cover the ears of the children
with their room temperature hands.
LXIV.
Word Count: 133
Added: 04/02/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
The frolicksome maids all have jobs in finance now.
The frolicksome maids are happy and fully self-actualized.
The frolicksome maids every so often still get up with each other
over anejo tequila sunrises. “Do you remember that little guy?”
Everyone remembers that little guy. How stuck up he was.
How he didn't realize that he was just a literary device like everyone else.
Jen works at Sotheby’s now. She remembers
how the Queen of Brobdingnag looked as the little guy
stepped onto her spread royal palm. The required lèse-majesté.
Now Jen remembers how she placed him
on her breast, how he squirmed in disgust.
How she held him there with one finger
while he heaved and retched. She listens to the other maids.
The frolicksome maid remembers how we always
get what we want, and it’s too much or too little, or both at the same time.
LXV.
Word Count: 202
Added: 04/04/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
We are posting our last wills and testaments,
our final messages on what the Brobdingnagians call Tiktok.
We struggle to find the right music. Lucy Dacus, Weird Al Yankovic.
"To my beloved Annabell, this is cat food. The cats here
are the size of Shetland ponies, and the Shetland ponies
are the size of buses. This cat food may look normal dry food
but within lies a succulent, soft, meaty center.
It is like my love for you. It is much to consider."
"To Robert: this cat toy, the size of a corgi, is full
of a soporific the likes of which could spavin every tiger
in Bengal. Deep s. indica, to be used sparingly."
For you, love, I save these notes. It seems as though outside
the storm is slackening and we can leave this pet store. On the glistening streets
the buses run again, are the size of thunderclouds,
they are full of electricity and fire and boredom and need.
I save for you these notes written in my hand.
I save for you these notes too small to read.
I save for you these notes as small as cat's teeth,
these notes on the backs of receipts.
I save for you these notes for when I whisper into
the shell of your ear and fall asleep within.
Notes on the Cantos
Word Count: 265
Added: 04/05/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
I thought it looked silly having this slab of text hanging over everything every time you read a part, so I'm giving it it's own chapter.
The title and the tone are clumsy tributes to Cantos for James Michener by David Berman, which can be found in his sole book of poetry, Actual Air, which
can be found here: https://www.dragcity.com/products/actual-air. It can
also be found in The Baffler, the magazine where it was originally
published, here:
https://thebaffler.com/poems/from-cantos-for-james-michener.
I
started out writing this as pure homage. As I wrote more, the unnamed
narrator/explorer took on more and more of the role of self-insert. In
LXVII, the transformation is complete, and it became part of a larger
work (including music) that I've been making since 2018, one which tries
to make sense of my world, the worlds of my friends and loved ones, and
the world in general since the events of August 11-13, 2017 in
Charlottesville, Virginia. As such, as they say, shit gets real, and while this is on the one hand escapism and wish fulfillment, on the other hand it very much isn't.
However
you feel about what I have written, please read Berman's Cantos, and
anything you can find by him, including the lyrics he wrote for his
band, The Silver Jews / Purple Mountains.
A note about tags and
rating: the vast majority of this is gentle, and the tags are not meant
to apply to every chapter. If there is any violence, it is
giant-on-giant, so to speak. I am still writing these, so this may
change. The chapter tags will be more precise.
LXVI.
Word Count: 198
Added: 04/05/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
At the mouth of a coal mine we found what is called Rubik’s Cube.
We hope to return it to him. A man gets lonely without his cube.
In an alleyway behind a restaurant, guarded by fierce dumpsters,
we found a tennis ball on which someone had written YOU.
In the towering mists that spewed from a condenser high atop the king’s kitchen,
we found several jacks but no red rubber ball. We assigned that task
to Johann but our new Brobdingnagian porter Jen asked us to reconsider:
Johann won't bounce. He could be a jack but not a ball. Jen is as wise as she is tall.
I feel there is a lesson to be learned there, about wisdom, about elasticity.
Johann was grateful. He is in love. I feel there is a lesson there as well.
I don't know what it would be. It is an explorer's intuition. When I speak to Jen,
she hints at another life. Her hands are soft. They do not speak of labor.
They speak of finance. At night I awaken from time to time unable to see
either moon or star. I call her name and she withdraws them from over me.
Her hands. I ask her to withdraw her hands from over me.
LXVII.
Word Count: 214
Added: 04/13/2025
Updated: 04/13/2025
LXVII.
Jen says it is stupid to sleep outside when her home
is just down the road. Jen says, I invite you every night
and you say it is the code of the explorer to sleep with
the stars our only canopy. I tell her that this is true,
and that there is even more in the code of the explorer.
Ways to gut a fish, or how to get back from Baltimore.
Jen says the code of the porter demands more carrying,
and places her soft hand before me. It’s true that from up here
I can see the horizon, such as it is. I see Five Below
is having a sale. A storm is brewing, coming from the direction
of the place of kebabs. There are signs and there are,
of course, portents. Jen says look there: blood.
When I look there is only a puddle. Jen says, but you could see
what I was thinking, right? As she opens the door
to the third floor one bedroom palace of a porter, she shrugs off
her coat and sets me on a low table. She says, I thought
there had been an accident. She turns off the light. Far above,
on the ceiling, tiny childish five pointed stars glow softly in the dark.
LXVIII.
Word Count: 70
from a Brobdingnagian crime scene.
Jen has brought us supplies: macchiato,
mocha, sous-vide soufflé egg bites.
The food, like the words, confuses
the tongue. It tastes like industry.
“The French eat to live,” she says. “We
eat to live long just enough to eat again.”
A Brobdingnagian croissandwich could
feed our party for a week. I know I will live forever.
Added: 04/18/2025
Updated: 04/18/2025
LXVIII.
from a Brobdingnagian crime scene.
Jen has brought us supplies: macchiato,
mocha, sous-vide soufflé egg bites.
The food, like the words, confuses
the tongue. It tastes like industry.
“The French eat to live,” she says. “We
eat to live long just enough to eat again.”
A Brobdingnagian croissandwich could
feed our party for a week. I know I will live forever.