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98 PATRICIA LOCKWOOD FACTORIES ARE EVERYWHERE IN POETRY RIGHT NOW We are watching a crayon being made, we are children, we are watching the crayon become crayons and more crayons and thinking how can there be enough room in America to make what makes it up, we are thinking all America is a factory by now, the head of it churning out fake oranges, the hand of it churning out glass bottles, the heel of it churning out Lego men. We are watching lifelike snakes get made, we are watching lifelike rats get made, we are watching army men get made; a whole factory for magic wands, a whole factory for endless scarves, a whole factory, America, for the making of the doves, a whole factory, America, for the making of long-eared rabbits and their love of deep dark holes. We are watching a marble being made, how does the cat’s eye get in the marble and how does the sight get into that, how does the hand get on it, how does the hand attach to the child, how does the child attach to the dirt, and how does the dirt attach to its only name, America. The name is manufactured here by rows of me in airless rooms. Sunlight is accidental, sunlight is runoff from the lightbulb factory, is ooze on the surface of all our rivers. Our abandoned factories make empty space and our largest factory produces distance and its endless conveyor produces miles. And people in the basement produce our underground. Hillbilly teeth are made here, but hillbilly teeth are made everywhere maybe. The factory that makes us is overseas, and meanwhile we, America, churn out China, France, Russia, Spain, and our glimpses of them from across the ocean. Above the factory billowing clouds can be seen for miles around. Long line of us never glances up from the long line of glimpses we’re making, we could make those glimpses in the dark, our fingertips could see to do it, all the flashing fish in the Finger Lakes have extra-plus eyes in America. The last factory, which makes last lines, makes zippers for sudden reveals: a break in the trees opens ziiiip on a view, the last line opens ziiiip on enormous meaning. 99 PATRICIA LOCKWOOD A – Z animals hunger for learning. They hunger for learning, you sneak them to school. A mouse in your pocket, a frog in your pocket. They talk or you think they can talk. A cricket hides in the dark of your desk and glitters like a great black iq point. You carried a housefly to school in your fist, now repeat after me the teacher says and the fly makes vowel sounds one by one and sometimes y the fly says. Now what other animal goes to school— a nude in your pocket, a full page of nude! She shines with concentration all over her skin, trying so hard to learn to learn. Man is an animal too says teacher; you brought a man to school today. A man from the past is visiting you and the one place he wanted to go was school and his name is Benjamin Franklin, Ben. He sits at the desk next to yours, learning each little quote he’s going to say and then lavishing the learn of his eyes on the nude, whose skin is bursting with the exports of Ecuador, mostly and mainly rain. Ben Franklin should not be in school, the word in his mouth should not be in school, a word that is where a girl pees from. A fresh sheet of ditto is laid on your desk. Don’t worry, you tell Ben Franklin—the unlearningest animal of all, the Answers, came to school today in your closed left fist, curly-tailed like they taught you to write them, impossibly small and already bleeding. The teacher writes quiet please on the board. The pig who came to school today is unprepared for the squeal of chalk. It asks is something else in here dying the way I’m going to? The cricket and Ben Franklin raise their hands, the Answers somehow raises yours. THE...

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