The Revenant, image by Daniel Y. Harris
excerpts from Cosmic Diaspora
Anima
wasn’t the
light of the unpronounceable name
wasn’t the
shadow of another future, burning fingers
but the
way the craft
encircled
her body
with
intimacy so ultimate
it could
only be achieved by a machine
as it
mimicked
the
splintering
emotional
carpet
she
unrolled every time
the noise
dropped for 8
seconds, when she was utterly alone
and as all space settlers
ritualistic
about–
this knowledge
you’re being disassembled
into a diaspora of atoms that know nothing
of each other’s existence
before coming together again
like water poured into a new glass
without any objective guarantee
of continuity
Circle Maker
vocabulary
of light –
all of his
metaphors, self-referential
without
footing
without
gravity or grammar ideas or things
he reads
light
–
so
closely, nothing’s recognizable –
how else
to accommodate – the unfolding?
“I know
all of the laws,” he broods,
“not to
mention superstitions but
none seem
to apply to me
I invented
the ideal compositional form –
at once
womb and loophole
coincidentia
and enjambment
but the
form’s contours
shattered
like a Lurianic carafe,
the energy
slithered
into a
side-project
and this
is my only origin story –
…fucking
bullshit!”
curtain
draws him open
a sentient
being, pure space wave
he dreams
of someone invisible to talk to
Second Invisibility
I look
between my fingers
where your
fingers are –
I know
they’re –
I am the
body who translates the invisible
there’re
others like me
but you –
how many of you are out there?
all I know
are the brushstrokes
across my
body
your
language
last night
there was
a touch
of another
–
a third
hand painting
across me
I accepted
it as yours
but from
deep inside, watched
counter-points
wholly
random
the two of
you –
unaware of
each other
can I hide
my thoughts from either one?
who am I
in consent and concealment?
last night
I learned
I am
as
invisible to you
as you are
to me –
as both of
us to this, third hand –
I am the
voice who translates the invisible
I am the
voice whose hunger is a language
No Eyes
not a
telescope but a phantom limb
stretching
towards the invisible –
is how the
experiment’s outcome
was
described to me; my consciousness, a small
price for
this new form of travel –
I was told
I’d have to become
a mythic
being with no eyes
concealed
and revealed
in the
garments that are not –
calligraphy
of life’s post-script –
when I
woke up blind and wanting
it was not
my hand that reached across
cosmos to
the stars we so wanted to see towards
the
outside we were so desperate to find –
instead,
their hands went into my corpus
my memory
bled unto their fingertips
I could
speak no words but laced
their
echoes, in patience & sorrow
*
in the
beginning, a burning mirror to erase
the dream of semblance, created
the dream of the missing alef,
which became the breath
of Elohim, the edge
of your song’s void
Telepathy Session
when she
said she could read my thoughts
I didn’t
think: scribal ant colony and its crumbs of vapor
didn’t
think: memory as a body that lies uncreated
my mind, a
tunnel, ancestors
burred
out of the
zoharic riddle that hid them
as if they
themselves were the conundra
“is there
a difference between telepathy
and
hypnosis?” I asked
“between
reading and writing?” she echoed
—Jake
Marmer
