I think of carapaces: hardened
integuments providing structure.
You have a turn for narrative, I for
analysis. We both have turns
of skulls under our skins and I
imagine yours:
how future archaeologists
will reconstruct your face.
A holographic rendering,
death mask, to place you
apart from ranks of skeletons.
How will I see you still
and gaze upon you
when my organs of veneration
have rotted from their sockets?
When bones have grown
over soft parts
and knit me
into sticks?

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‍

It was a dull, rather red light.
Low down and near the horizon
hung a great, red sun:
a sun near the end of its life,
weary of looking down upon that world.
The water had long since vanished,
and it was now only a wide ditch of grey dust.
To the upper left of the sun,
a single star: large and luminous.
Sirius shines brighter in summer—
icon of a mastiff, ferocious,
gripping and mauling you.
Dog days return to the Po Valley.
Our guide tells us
that these towns, too, were built
on crumbling volcanic rocks.
Once, the great salt lake
extended out to here.
Its new objective is return.
It is expanding:
a long slow-motion flood.
The coast will be submerged:
inch by inch, earth will surrender
to the sea’s silent advances.
Yellow sunflower heads will turn on their stems,
movements slowed by water pressure.
They won’t realize that they are past the flowering.
They will leave the signs of their petals in the sand,
petrified like ammonites; they will prevent
the erasure of their lives
from the fossil record.
The red disc surveils us.
The problem is that we want
to birth desire everywhere.
Change the channel;
make it die again.

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‍

Swivel head on its axis and neck skin will stretch
out over the bones and tendons like a drum or
a reptile. It’s not contagious, just spreading
out over this skin (ampia, sconvolta, lunare
rotta spaziata gigantesca). It’s not contagious,
just shedding all over this house. Twitch and tense
tongue, ingest dead skin, lick blood off cuts and cracks,
expose raw canvas as paint flakes fall away.
Sweep them up; make a pile by the door
un mucchio da buttare nella macchia but first
make sure that day is broken. Explain again
when and why I stopped eating my mother.

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