The Lichtenberg Figures. Ben Lerner

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СКАЧАТЬ am I the antecedent of?

      When I shave I feel like a Russian.

      When I drink I’m the last Jew in Kansas.

      I sit in my hammock and whittle my rebus.

      I feel disease spread through me like a theory.

      I take a sip from Death’s black daiquiri.

      Darling, my favorite natural abstraction is a tree

      so every time you see one from the highway

      remember the ablative case in which I keep

      your tilde. (A scythe of moon divides

      the cloud. The story regains its upward sweep.)

      O slender spadix projecting from a narrow spathe,

      you are thinner than spaghetti but not as thin as vermicelli.

      You are the first and last indigenous Nintendo.

      §

      We must retract our offerings, burnt as they are.

      We must recall our lines of verse like faulty tires.

      We must flay the curatoriat, invest our sackcloth,

      and enter the Academy single file.

      Poetry has yet to emerge.

      The image is no substitute. The image is an anecdote

      in the mouth of a stillborn. And not reflection,

      with its bad infinitude, nor religion, with its eighth of mushrooms,

      can bring orgasm to orgasm like poetry. As a policy,

      we are generally sorry. But sorry doesn’t cut it.

      We must ask you to remove your shoes, your lenses, your teeth.

      We must ask you to sob openly.

      If it is any consolation, we admire the early work of John Ashbery.

      If it is any consolation, you won’t feel a thing.

      §

      I attend a class for mouth-to-mouth, a class for hand-to-hand.

      I can no longer distinguish between combat and resuscitation.

      I could revive my victims. I could kill a man

      with a maneuver designed to clear the throat of food. Tonight, the moon

      sulks at apogee. A bitch complains to the polestar. An enemy

      fills a Ping-Pong ball with Drano and drops it in the gas tank of my car.

      Reader, may your death strictly adhere to recognized forms.

      May someone place his lips on yours, shake you gently, call your name.

      May someone interlace his fingers, lock his elbows, and compress your chest,

      every two seconds, to the depth of one and one-half inches. In the dream,

      I discover my body among the abandoned tracks of North Topeka.

      Orlando Duran stands over me, bleeding from his eye. I can no longer distinguish

      between verb moods that indicate confidence and those that express uncertainty.

      An upward emergency calls away the sky.

      §

      Pleasure is a profoundly negative experience, my father

      was fond of saying underwater. His body was carried out

      like a wish. We paid our last respects

      as rent. The mere possibility of apology allows me to express

      my favorite wreck as a relation between stairs

      and stars. I take that back. To sum up, up

      beyond the lamp’s sweep, where a drip installed by heat

      still drips—some tender timbers. At thirteen, I had a series

      of dreams I can’t remember, although I’m sure

      that they involved a rape. I’m brutal because I’m naked,

      not because I’m named, a distinction

      that the scientific and scholarly communities,

      if not the wider public, should be expected to maintain.

      No additional media available (but isn’t it beautiful when a toddler manages to find and strike a match).

      §

      I invite you to think creatively about politics in the age of histamine.

      I invite you to think creatively about politics

      given men as they are: asthmatic, out of tune and time,

      out of bounds and practice. I invite you to run your mouth, to run your hands

      through my thin hair like a theme. I invite you to lean your head

      against my better judgment. Once uncertainty

      ran through these sketches like a Lab. Now, of my early work, a critic has said:

      “It was open, so I let myself in.” Ladies and gentlemen,

      tonight’s weather has been canceled. The Academy has condemned

      the blue tit. The poor are stealing the saltlicks. Grenades luxuriate

      in the garden of decommissioned adjectives. It is the Sabbath. I must invite you

      to lay down your knowledge claims,

      to lay them down slowly and with great sadness.

      Given men as they are, women pack snow into jars for the summer ahead.

      Given men as they are, the trees surrender.

      §

      I’m going to kill the president.

      I promise. I surrender. I’m sorry.

      I’m gay. I’m СКАЧАТЬ