Ololyga
You remember too much,
My mother said to me recently.
Why hold on to all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?
– Anne Carson
In the streets the women wore their wooden faces.
They wore their faces as masks of petrified water.
The streets of the city had once been water.
Once gondoliers took the women down the water roads.
Unless the water raised its hand on every side
they did not know if they had been abducted.
The gondoliers took up driving when the waters dried.
The revved the motors of their vans and cross-terrain vehicles.
The tires of these machines rode the rough surface.
Their grooves filled with the remnant dirt and mud.
Sometimes the women could not hear.
They thought they heard the grooves had filled with blood.
They were cracked vessels.
They wanted to hold in the sound of blood.
Their failure was noted everywhere.
Neither was there blood, nor was there a container.
On the street corner they were told to cover their hands.
Because they were lava the fingers were flowing.
This put things outside that people knew belonged inside.
These people oftentimes were men.
They knew best the difference between outside and in
as they were able to visit both in the bodies of themselves and others.
Others were mostly women though some men were not particular.
Once the lava got going there was a hard time stopping it
no matter how much you put a little cork in each fingertip.
Surprisingly birds turned out also to be made of lava.
Though being made of lava turned the birds all to vultures
in the public eyes of the people who looked upward.
The sky that belonged outside got all cluttered up
like poison with wrong inside things.
Soon it was ash falling on everything falling
on the invisible frequencies of an Internet of pain
the women had strung across and through themselves.
And doing this, the sky began to hum.
* * * * *
ordure
I
in the crevice of a boot it crosses continents
where washed away it disperses its chance cargo
II
mandibles grinding the front legs form the ball
which is worse: the smell or to know the seeping
III
what is buried saves us millions from the air
visible runoff from the hog farms, series of brown pools
IV
spreading through the fields and rivers bathe in the river
and pray in it wash clothes in the river and drink from it
V
we were told the psylocibe grew from it
it could be bought at the garden center, cleaned and sanitized
VI
the rich fled the banks of the Seine for the stench
now you can visit the arched tunnels that contained it
VII
the scarab rolls his ball like the sun all day until night falls
rolling across the sky the sun catches in a methane web
VIII
a people free of disease for nearly a century
drink down river their bodies running out
IX
it piles up precipitously even in winter
they head out with the spreader on every continent
X
the feeders converge consuming burying
on every continent raw pools of man and beast
XI
unbearable to look upon the nightsoil men who trade in it
elytra in the desert royal wings in the meadow
XII
everything in the world is made from it at last
the purple emperor uncurls its fine proboscis