A Spade Is for Piercing the Ground and a Shovel Is for Heaving
Preparations begin now, in the middle of my lifeâ
death was born with me, didnât expect to change languages,
might not know when it is called. Sometimes English sits on the surface of the skin.
We are water, we are rivers of descent;
gravity is inevitable yet grievable.
Mourn as you like, death is another migration.
Bring the body home and gently lay it down on its back,
bind tightly the hands and feet of the corpse,
do this to keep it from running away like a lonely childâ
carry the coat it wore (when it was a person) to the roofâ
a flag of surrender, a signal flag to the spirit world, new arrival;
call out the name of the dead three times.
Perfume the bath waterâthe death of a thousand flowersâ
comb the hair and catch what falls,
what was grown from the body must accompany the body.
Manicure the fingernails and toenails,
carefully reserve the nail trimmings,
the hair and nails are to be collected into five pouches for the coffin.
Obtain a spoon made from a willow tree, it is a lightweight hardwood,
not heavy in the mouthâ
feed the corpse three spoonfuls of uncooked rice: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand bushels.
Slide metal coins into the mouthâthe spirit journey can be costly, the way longâ
cloak the body in the death dress of hemp or silk,
envelop the body with a quilted cloth, and bind the body with ropes seven times.
Transport the body on a decorated bier out of the houseâfor this you need the livingâ
observe it float heavily toward the gate. Not unlike a boat
the bier is decorated with fierce dragons and phoenixes; colorful dolls guard the dead.
On the way out of the household premises, lower the bier three timesâ
the deadâs final departure from home is marked with this ritual bowing.
At the grave, the shaman will exorcise evil spirits from the site. Pay the shaman.
Submerge the coffin in the open ground, it has already been emptied, given its duty,
yes, like another mouth, or a box for a smaller boxâone by one,
the ground is a wound that heals, that embraces its lost materials.
Mines and Museums, or, the DMZ Is a Nature Preserve
The wreck of human invention tastes of space
Most borders are invitation of affliction
Most borders make orphans
Mines wind down under a layer of earth like clocks and roots
The ghosts of burned trees dream in Russian
While in the multiverse the mannequins abandon their cosmonaut suits in the museums
What are these trenches but future (museums)
In the weaponry of space; all the earth is a mine
Compactor and gardener of deaths yet to burgeon
Our eyes at the front of our heads to fox and fix
Prey on the horizon; moving as if on a track
Sightlines rings of planetary wax museums; dark matter
In space there are no seasons
Saturn is Romeâs god of agriculture; god of time god of dissolution
Treasury and revelry
The god-milk of temporal adjustments
The gods of role reversals; nurseries and the orphanâs premonitions
A curse requires no special rituals
Another name Sterculius from stercus meaning dung meaning life from death
Meaning shit and sun and seeds
And baptism of your godchild and the drowning the river
The difference between a museum and a tomb
A bomb is not a metaphor
I wore a belt made of ice; I grew with child, a child of ice
and all alongâmy mother: a glacier, a shipwreck
Behind This Door Is a Siberian Tiger
A child born in the Year of the Tiger
is destined to split apples, collect matchbooks, and speak
the language of fire-in-the-field.
A poet can make the sun jealous.
To use magic to become small, to stow away
in hollow logs, to polish her claws so smooth
they reflect last monthâs moonlight.
Let us talk about light. How does your mother
pronounce it. How does your father bury it.
How does your brother borro...