Ian Cheng, from This Papaya Tastes Perfect, 2011

I.

Here are the Germans in Arizona and New Mexico.

Their skin turning the coral-red of the veined rocks, of the local jewelry, as if the color had begun to rub off on them in the heat, some kind of desert frottage but really a sunburn is the just the opposite, if you think about it.

But that is how things are when they are opposites: you can't tell them apart.

Like the first time the group saw a Swastika on a native's cloth rug beady red inside a clutch of eagles, their wings eddying around it—one of them realized for the first time that the sign looked exactly like a miniature windmill (another learned later that in Navajo the symbol did almost mean that, in fact—"whirling log")

Another German was embarrassed; but for the others, this sign was a sign and they telegraphed Goebbels immediately.

It was like when Cortez had arrived in Mexico: 

His men found that the natives there already worshipped a deity with long hair and fair skin, Quetzelcoatl, who had walked the earth before he ascended into the heavens. Ignoring any other possibility, Cortez understood this as the proof of the universality of Jesus, our Lord and Savior. 

The Germans didn't know it then, but that turned out to be the "breakthrough" of their reconnaissance mission. It was the best these code crackers would do: discover a symbol they already all wore on their uniforms.  

The rest of the Navajo language remained as much of a mystery as when it had first been captured coming across the Allied wireless.  

After they returned home, those Germans still thought of the Allied Code, but something changed. It made no more sense, but before, whereas ...

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A crater dismounted facing towards

One problem

Natural counting towards two a surface

You said ‘immaleable ruin’

That settles in the palm of a hand

 

Development psych

Standing in it’s shadow

Giving a one way signal

Like no one is home

 

Cosmic accents

Back and forth

Like where are you from

Anyway

 

Make from me leaned over

A sitting desk

A standing desk

 

Five thousand bookmarks

Returning numbers in fines

I have paid for this in interest

Down-paid

Discomfort

 

Swung open

A revolving door turns unconvinced

Pre-paid

 

I am still at home

I have not left yet

I am in Queens

 

What one line can accomodate

A text wrap around

That one.

 

Alternative to a shade of preparation

Alternating between white and another white that you notice less

Putting one glove on takes two hands

And what can my cold hands say to that?

 

Standing on gravel

site specific self identifying

As gravel

 

Layout interrupted

A path following

An aluminum Swiss water bottle

 

A transcription:

She told me they sell no deodorant here

I knew she was lying I asked

Why I know that you are lying

She told we do but they don’t need deodorant here

I knew she was lying

I said you are lying

She said you are the salt of the earth

 

With one hand held over two breasts

No dark storm can rage over two breasts

With one hand

And cream shirt worn

Into a dark 3 p.m. screening

Of my life my love

This love is truly abated by

No one else’s breasts

 

A distant swiss watch chimes background fade

Powdered marble on powdered marble on

An unlined t shirt

Cognito ergo sum

 

Index finger in hot black coffee

There is no aporia in heaven

She said wiping her nail ...

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If rationality and consistent thought are the preferred distinguishing marks of man, then even if it is admitted that man, as a whole, also has passions, the supremacy of rational thought over them may well seem an unquestionable idea. This is all the more so, since it is quite obvious that gaining some such control is a basic condition of growing up, and even, at the extreme, of sanity. But to move from that into making such control into the ideal, rules out a priori most forms of spontaneity. And this seems to be absurd.

I would suggest to find your deepest impulse, and follow that. The notion that there is something that is one's deepest impulse, that there is a discovery to be made here, rather than a decision; and the notion that one trusts what is so discovered, although unclear where it will lead—these, rather, are the point. The combination—discovery, trust, and risk—are central to my sort of outlook, as of course they are to the state of being in love.

 

 

Although this is not print, I write in a manner that facilitates transmission in other forms such as print, spoken word, and via a screen reader. So terms such as "this article" are preferable to "this website," and I avoid terms like "click here," which makes no sense when using a screen reader, for instance. In determining what language is most suitable, it is helpful to imagine I'm writing the content for print. So my work is no longer a finished corpus, some content enclosed in an object or its margins, but a differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces. The content in these traces is a glimpse of something, an encounter ...

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Engines within the Throne

 

We once worked as clerks

            scanning moth-balled pages

into the cloud, all memories

outsourced except the fuzzy

            childhood bits when

 

I was an undersized girl with a tic,

they numbed me with botox.

            I was a skinsuit

of dumb expression, just fingerprints

over my shamed

 

            all I wanted was snow

to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,

muffle the drum of freeways, erase

            the old realism

 

but this smart snow erases

            nothing, seeps everywhere,

the search engine is inside us,

the world is our display

 

            and now every industry

has dumped cubicles, desktops,

fax machines into developing

            worlds where they stack

them as walls against

 

what disputed territory 

            we asked the old spy who drank

with Russians to gather information 

the old-fashioned way,

 

now we have snow sensors,

            so you can go spelunking

in anyone’s minds, 

let me borrow your child

 

thoughts, it’s benign surveillance,

            I can burrow inside, find a cave

pool with rock colored flounder,

and find you, half-transparent

with depression.

 

A Wreath of Hummingbirds

 

I suffer a different kind of loneliness.

From the antique ringtones of singing

wrens, crying babies, and ballad medleys,

my ears have turned

to brass.

 

They resurrect a thousand extinct birds,

Emus, dodos, and shelducks, though some,

like the cerulean glaucous macaw,

could not survive the snow.  How heavily

they roost on trees in raw twilight.

 

I will not admire those birds,

not when my dull head throbs, I am plagued

by sorrow, a green hummingbird eats me alive

with its stinging needle beak.

 

Then I meet you.  Our courtship is fierce

in a prudish city that scorns our love,

as if the ancient laws of miscegenation

are still in place.  I am afraid

I will infect you

 

after a virus clogs the gift economy:

booming ...

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