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  • After Yellow Fever, and: Mefloquine Side Effects*
  • Mary-Alice Daniel (bio)

AFTER YELLOW FEVER

  1. 1. If he dies during the Month of Brides it is a great shame.

  2. 2. Wash the body 3 or 5 or 7 times—Never 2 or 4 or 6 times.

  3. 3. We see Allah rearranging candlesticks in the starry hall of heavens,
           creating spectral shapes, undoing them
           and remixing the whole music of the situation,
           in widening circles containing us in these compulsions,
           as he wonders which fires he has left un-extinguished.

  4. 4. Who commits us to these instructions?
           Your heavenly blameless Father,
           his prophets and your earthly fathers:
           superstitions and blind notions.

  5. 5. Welcome all to the funeral: Buddhists, followers after Christ,
           those who believe in Chang’e, the lady in the moon,
           who sweeps her vast cold palace all alone.

  6. 6. Remember the small black dogs your mother dreamt devoured
           each other in play near the incense pit, and know:
           if there are night visions, there are mystical visions.
           There must be a heaven, gods’ birthplace—
           therein resides Allah.

  7. 7. The face must point toward the House of God in Mecca:
           the living always walk beside or in front of death.

  8. 8. Into the grave, place no object!

  9. 9. Avoid burial at sunrise, high noon, and sunset.

  10. 10. Allow neither music nor emotional outburst,
           for though we surrender our dead to the earth,
           forward from it
                 we shall bring them
                             once again.

The procedure described above is the only one correct.
To Him do we belong and unto Him is our return. [End Page 260]

MEFLOQUINE SIDE EFFECTS*

#4: Recurring Nightmares

  • • The Blood of Jesus Barber Shop

  • • snowflakes larger than milk pans

  • • eight-bedroom disaster mansion

  • • an upside-down rainbow

Road trips taken in dreams are different:

You mistake California for an island.Every few miles, a human-related incident,or Shiva trampling the dwarf of ignoranceand dancing the cosmos into existence.The Midwest coming for the rest of your life:           What can you do about it now.

  • • On the radio, another infomercial for Teethfallingoutdreams.org

  • • On your phone, #greenbirds

            celebrates the souls of martyrs

        nesting in chandeliers hung from the throne of the almighty

  • • On billboards, ads are windows

                to new outlooks:

People are heartening, for example.People are the actual, valid argumentagainst their abusers.

Your heart can’t really explode. I mean,I am sure it could. [End Page 261]

#5: Paranoia

If you assemble it, you will love it: The Ikea Effect.This even applies to dreams—

An emerging psychiatric practice proposesthat scripting your nightmares while awakecould eliminate the worst.

Not everyone agrees that’s healthy.Now I write nightmares of murders in a small town.

A victim either incurs the wrath of demonsor else is chosen to be their horse:(So maybe I should stop riling things up—)

Hypothuswas drowned at seafor theorizing irrational numbers.        That’s seriously all it took. [End Page 262]

Mary-Alice Daniel

MARY-ALICE DANIEL was born in Northern Nigeria and raised in the suburbs of London and Nashville, Tennessee. After attending Yale University, she received her MFA from the University of Michigan. Her adopted home is Los Angeles, where she is earning a PhD in creative writing and English literature as an Annenberg Fellow at the University of Southern California. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Mid-American Review, Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals.

Footnotes

* Mefloquine is the anti-malaria drug I take whenever I am in West Africa. Side effects include hallucinations and other “unusual thoughts,” paranoia, and vivid dreams. One woman remained in a mefloquine-induced psychosis for a month.

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