From “This Is Only a Test”
- From “This Is Only a Test”
From “This is Only a Test”
1. Poison the Wells
Do not let them tell you there is no water here. A great aquifer in the base of the skull sloshes as we go through the motions. Chickens and eggs are useless. Fear is the first into that pool and then we get creative. Take a land of nothing. We have plenty. Build a dam in one to power great lakes of electrolysis in another. Send divorced elements by the ton to build homes for lonely pilots who can cross a sea. Keep your head straight or the weight of the tide will bowl you over. Elsewhere, whole storms and seasons are diverted to cool what is buried. The pipelines a crude frontal lobe. The head the original cooling tower. Watch the sutures closely. On days it rains there will be no tests. But imagine the steam. [End Page 147]
2. Pacing
in cartoons we run in place spin in concentric perfect predation we con men ouroboros chasing our own
in the desert long before the incremental and reductionist there is a slow traverse a trail or room a season long or more
outside the lab sinewy legs cross a courtyard and back again thinking through
a puzzle sans edges fear only a distance between foot and footfall the impasse or procession [End Page 148]
12. Sacrament
A region of sacrifice. Erogenous zone of faith. Hold the federal wafer to my lips. I will take you into my body. Transubstantiation of all things beyond the naked eye. And though I walk in the valley of death, I will fear no light. I will rise from the ashes, sweep them from my children’s’ hair and go about your business. [End Page 149]
Michael McLane is an editor for both Sugar House Review and Saltfront: Studies in Human Habit(at). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including Dark Mountain, Denver Quarterly, Interim, Colorado Review, the Laurel Review, and Side-brow. He lives in Salt Lake City, where he is the director of the Utah Humanities Book Festival and the Center for the Book.
