bird naming
Classification Is a Country
DOMAIN: 1492, la illah ila allah
KINGDOM: daughters, without bodies
PHYLUM: archive, settler
CLASS: plot, below
ORDER: winged, flightless
FAMILY: dialect continua
SPECIES: interstice interbreeding with history
GENUS: invented for convenience, hidden error
Ibis
1. In France or London, the sibilant machine of SCIENCE invents a bird based on the relics of Egyptian monuments, which is not an exact copy of Nature.
2. Fragments of amber rewoven into the composite Image, is also an invitation to form Sound, the whistle of species placed in a jar.
3. The jar is the Art of categories, the essential basis of our conditionâto not look away but to look in wreaths, full blown, to sow our reflection as an exact copy of Nature.
4. According to Herodotus there are two kinds of ibis: black and white, the black is the enemy of serpents, the white is a domestic bird. The afterlife is a house, not all birds are allowed in.
5. The best-preserved birds are found in the mummies of Saqqara, wrapped in dyed linen, then sawed open. Tools dressed in membrane correct myth: there were shellfish in the cavities, not snakes.
6. In order to preserve SCIENCE, the language of speculums rusting by the window, we must shake the graves of birds. Shaking graves is not a species complexâwhich is actually an argument of resemblance, a market for more skin.
7. Precise methods of dissection are also useful when carving the womb out of a womanâs corpse. We draw this jar to reproduce ourselves, in order to keep producing the SCIENCE of birds. Bodies are families, bred of facts and secrets waiting to become facts.
8. She who scrivensâdo you contain a monster nostalgia?
keep keep keep keep keep keep keep keep
9. Years from now, when sliced open to be redrawn from memory, the naturalists discover an engraving in the urn of my skull: play dead (and a laugh track).
The Roman legions whom you have sometimes imitated, but not as yet equaled, fought Carthage successively upon this sea and upon the plains of Zama. Victory never forsook them, because they were constantly brave, patient of fatigue, well disciplined, resolute. But, soldiers, Europe has her eyes upon you! You have great destinies to fulfill, battles to fight, fatigues to surmount!
Frenchmen, you are about to undertake a conquest of which the effects upon the civilization and commerce of the world are incalculable. The first city you are to meet was founded by Alexander.
Cadis, Sheiks, Imams, Chorbadgys, you will be told that I came to destroy your religion; do not believe it. Let your answer be that I come to reestablish your rights. . . .
âNapoleon Bonaparte,
Speech on the Egyptian Campaign, 1798
I have this nightmare about fucking Napoleon
in which the bareness of me is already annotated:
each clavicle hued, irises diagrammed, a petri of my saliva
in the morning. There is no time to whisper cerulean
into my loverâs mouth. The urgency of discovery announces
BLUE, crisply ironed. It is easier to divide the world this way
he explains, when there is only always more to divide.
I never take it personally, because I do not really exist.
A palette mirage, I pluck the harp for his sergeant the zoologist,
who is studying the curious eccentricities of Muslim gender
relations, An imbalance of power, he says.
the subject of much debate
Here a case study on limits: Bruised
strawberries, High on hash,
abroad and bolstering the Local
economy. I read about a man
who stabbed two dutch Tourists
in casablanca. I often canât dictate
if I am a Dead Tourist
or the killer but I know I am Embarrassed,
in the midst of the arab
spring as an american arab Student
fixated on a pale Boy
in class. an avid climber,
he teaches me how to say crevice
in french, fente; in the streets of rabat,
an uprising, a thawra:
I mostly speak in english
and avoid the irony of my invasion.
except when the cab driver tries
to rip me off where are you From?
Out comes the broken lantern
I inherited and poorly
maintained. I could have
been more honest,
said, I locate myself
in the city of eve
but There,
I just wanted him to believe me.
Public Botany
The cab driver hung himself tomorrow. The cabâs stillness
cocooned by snow. Yellow has degraded in value, periled over
time. Some species of plants trap and kill their prey, to eat.
Some of us are proxies for rendering weather. Living demands
I tell you something about ...