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Or Portals to Another World
- University of Illinois Press
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32 Or Portals to Another World By day the cloud-shadows fell on wooded hills. The deciduous terrain claimed uncharted shadow-lakes in the tops of trees, the nomadic shapes passed from leaves to leaves as dictated by a wind, or by the fringe of sky that drew a bath of dark (secluded cradle), or by a general of sun who sent the signals as alarums for the gathering of armies— By night, the shadows fell again but protean black onto black— A doorway opened up a crack— 33 —and the pilots bomb —the faces (the flesh of faces) from incredible height above sheared from bodies— A face the city, incinerating all chews another face, a limp face its boulevards and buildings, in pleats from its mouth. landscaping, industrial A face hangs like a rag matrices—and no one runs, from a pointed stick driven hard no animal howls into the ground, a stake to measure at piles of brick, property. And over the face of the sun, not a thing escapes, two faces hang, their scalloped attempts— The pilots land edges fluttering in the breeze. in embers to crawl Some faces have so many exhausted into neat, provided holes from the chewing, the beds. TWELVE HOURS, puncturing, from dragging barks a captain. And as they themselves by teeth sleep, a host of unknown over the beach of broken creatures surfaces to build again shells (a beach whose ocean a different city in the Ārst long ago receded) that acrobatic one’s place, a general surveys the lines of flies angle through, Ānished land, plants coordinates threading faces together [18.117.91.153] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 09:00 GMT) 34 for threats and whispers in their flight paths. The buzzing missions in a handheld player. of the flies disturbs the ones with ears, And waking into new demand, ears heavy and fleshy, tugging down each pilot plunges direct the corners of the eyes, tugging into adrenaline, and from the forehead and the cheeks to fold his cramped cockpit, great channels where the tears from his helmet humid can flow, the irrigation of that desiccated with his quickened breath, earth. On a steppe, faces balance. flies high enough above The cruel faces slide wet that the target grows surreal from birthing sacks, and drenched, and still, and there he locks set off away, designing— One face the enemy as numbers grinds its teeth in its sleep, in the crosshairs and feels again if you could call its constant trembling, his heart, deafening inside its refusal to open its eyes, “sleep.” his chest, his lungs now breathless This is the face that tries to bury with the deed, his senses sharpened itself, waiting for the rain to come to a super-human sharp, much sharper that the parched dust might than in life, than in some forge to mud where it ordinary life— can lay itself down— 35 [18.117.91.153] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 09:00 GMT) 36 Charred, broken stalks, Only dirt, sky, the deafening the blown-out holes, static, and an animal’s tracks and the miserables gone out of sight Dawn comes near continuous, for the day much shorter than the world’s day as they limp with their chosen others beneath the lines of noise (“Others”: some (the dusty paw prints lured sorrowful, some disappear). The crackling re-enact their dance, their ritual of appearance. The light in beacon shines, outlines a puzzler hopeful, maimed frays and convulses, ramiĀes silent for a peer.) like a grid of electric wires A fashioned tragedy low over the ground to circle on the barren dirt into whose perimeter the grass blades bend themselves to share. For each can form a hovering tighten tourniquets, gauze atmospheric wrap, net of inflicted wounds. perpetual voltage, and bow, release their dewdrops and raise to height, a hoisting by thinnest glimmer-threads left by a diligent spider. For competence can make synaptic code, a buffer for the sky a splint from a former’s bone should a lost thing look and set the brokenness—awry— for vantage, should 37 The violets unfold their stems to reach while tenor crocuses jut with thicker stalks, the worms appearing in curve speciĀc to the sick, a grounded thing the sickened head try reaching higher than to cradle— For competence itself. The animal was at the brink of passageways, gnats in pizzicato clouds, and the beetles metallically arranged to flare the angels down...