From Angle of Yaw

The predictability of these rooms is, in a word, exquisite. These rooms in a word. The moon is predictably exquisite, as is the view of the moon through the word. Nevertheless, we were hoping for less. Less space, less light. We were hoping to pay more, to be made to pay in public. We desire a flat, affected tone. A beware of dog on keep off grass. The glass ceiling is exquisite. Is it made of glass? No, glass.

IT IS WITH SOME DIFFIDENCE the author offers his public to the work. The tree remains where it was felled: inside the head, standing. For if my race provides an extensive field for theory, our rhymes are no less trash. The author retains no ill will toward the Gypsy people, nor a will in general. Without enthusiasm, we have chosen enthusiasm over truth. After dinner, straight to winter. Sidi Habismilk, I have searched the Internet. Nothing indicates your God is sorry. That's because our God is sorrow. In one palm, a lake of fire. In the other, a posthumous issue.

TO BUILD THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MIRROR, to outdate the moon, to dream en masse, to sleepmarch, to watch earthrise from the anonymous depths of our diamond helmets, screams Hamsun, and the general will will fall to the earth as highly stylized debris. For all that remains of the public are its enemies, whose image will not be returned, so let them eat astronaut ice cream, from which we have abstracted ice, let them read magazine verse in the waiting rooms of plastic surgeons commissioned to implant breasts into their brains. To pave the horizon with silver nitrate, to simulate the nation through reflected light, to watch over ourselves in our sleep, to experience mediacy immediately, screams Hamsun, raising his glass, by waking into a single dream, THE STATE.

THE ARTIST PROPOSES A SERIES OF LIGHTS attached to tall poles, spaced at intervals along our public roads, and illuminated from dusk to dawn. The public is outraged. The law's long arm cannot support its heavy hand. The public is outrage. Kindergarteners simulate bayonet fighting with the common domestic fowl. Does this blood look good on me? Does this blood make me look fat? If you replace a cow's stomach with glass, don't complain when you cut your mouth.

THE PUBLIC DEPENDS upon private sorrow. Well-regulated peacetime sorrow. I respect no office founded before the invention of the pistol, before an emphasis on brushstroke. We decide on a motion. The body vetoes. Nostalgia is futurity's privileged form in this economy of downturns. Is the television a linear descendent of the musket or the hearth? In American motels, the lamps are nailed down so that you will want to steal them, a Christian notion. Get off my property, she says, when I try to calm her down. Get out of my car, she says, when I try to wake her up. We stop our rotten teeth with gold. We drink a crystal cola. We counteract unwanted odor at inestimable human cost. As if you could choose between loving and leaving the weather. The rich kids in Providence are moving to Mexico. Rich kids in Mexico are moving to Providence. I'm on my umpteenth Pabst, awaiting order, making difference.

THE MAN OBSERVES THE ACTION ON THE FIELD with the tiny television he brought to the stadium. He is topless, painted gold, bewigged. His exaggerated foam index finger indicates the giant screen upon which his own image is now displayed, a model of fanaticism. He watches the image of his watching the image on his portable TV on his portable TV. He suddenly stands with arms upraised and initiates the wave that will consume him.

EQUIPPED WITH FLUFFLY PLUMAGE that allows for almost noiseless flight. Our bombs are dropped from such altitudes our wars have ended by the time they reach their targets. Like that sentence. No, like any sentence. Maintaining the blood supply to the brain during rapid vertical acceleration requires subtle...