Spectacle

[Eric Helms]

The same old eye swims out like a trainof glass, milk, of life that whistles froma hole punched through this match box–camera obscura: a stage trick of cloud,mirror and spark, the light that she turnson, again, to turn our world against …The plank on which one walks with the limpof pride, despair, dignity and defiance tapersoff and, as Grünbein writes, expresses“a slaughtered animal.” Except thereis no death. Just this suffering of dust,windblown loess: a logging roadof dearth, insufficiency on whichwe both have woken blurred and dampof this flesh, heavy against ourselves,feeling only the tongue with whichwe choke down another cancerous stickof betrayal. Despite being an atheist,your mother’s puritan stab at communion,your father’s preemptive strike at forthrighteousness–well, they have done theirbest to open my chest and hang my head-less world. But like a rainbow trout, preferringa little venom, a little speed, a little turbulence:flung down a gulch as when our life dividedfor this little death and dropped sheer enough