Devil’s Lake

This is where that particular army is made, the ways

in which we will revel in it. I love the installation. Look

at how it heals me. Me, an average citizen with average

mirrored bones, my average skeleton seeing itself only

in you. Your blood running over it like lightning, like

a future, lean and angular and unreal. Follow it. Follow

it all. What science do we have to believe in? I mean,

really believe in? These bones don’t make me a man

they are only making me more bones. All ranked and

filed. What they say is real hero. What they got is just

a heart beating back. I fear I am inappropriate in this

world. Listen deep. Fall in line with my frequencies.

That tone? That tone is the humming of my better

machines. My guts. Hello. Hello guts. We are lonely

without these late night talks. We are lonely with

these bones that are invisible to their environment.

Mirrors make an echo chamber of free repeating

reflections. This, for instance, is my forever femur.

What pants are right on a day like today? What hands?

Nakedness doesn’t frighten me. How things get lost

in the bigness of my biology does. I don’t know how

I keep it all in me. Skin is a solid representation of

some end. Where the mirror fails. I feel overcome

frequently. I have felled my own limbs and certainly

they can be a fortress, but I prefer they be inviting.

We are lonely and it is impossible to send messages

through a failed system. There is soon to be a shutdown.

On television there is talk that if we open our eyes wide

enough, any number of new countries would overtake

their horizons. And yet, in mine all we see is five tiny

birds lost in the tremendous rustling of a clouded sky.