Swan Fucker
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
— W B Yeats, "Leda and the Swan"
Going deaf from the clamor of too many dooms,
balancing life like an egg on a spoon,
dreaming of a gorgeous, baleful wave:
liquid obsidian. Who knew that planets can lose their atmospheres?
It happened to Mars. But—Chill! This ain’t all about us,
some sage rebukes the general wail: We’re fucked.
Kathy Acker dubbed Leda the girl who "fucked
a swan," quaintly figuring god-bird as ingenue’s object. Doom
like that she mothered, thing of grandeur from afar, strikes us
in closeup as a congeries of pratfalls: plastic spoons
not pitchforks. Meanwhile, the sublime (e.g. music of the spheres)
disappears as we scout the skies for radio waves
replying to our zealous SETI crew, those experts at waving
while drowning. Hey, come on down and share our unfucking-
believable buzz, our surf’s-up thrill in sparkling spheres
of gain efficiently juiced by grief so vast it dooms
detail, all that’s small and neighborly. Spoon-
cuddled lovers trill, "This world belongs to us,"
cocoon in their angsty kitsch plurality—but what of "us"
writ large? Who dares say "we" and mean that abstract wave
of species-being; speak for all specific drops? We’re spoon-
fed schemes for terraforming Mars, framing epic fuck-
ups here below as reculer pour mieux sauter. But our doom
wasn’t built in a day. What nerve, expecting the greater heliosphere
to welcome the pirates who ravaged Earth’s excellent atmosphere!
Just breathe, be here now someone chirps as I mourn that total us,
multi-billion-headed, foundering, self-doomed.
Or say the fail-civ gets a clue; looks like annihilation’s waived—
but wait! Don’t suns flame out? And then their planets are fucked,
perforce. O what to do when the dish runs off with the spoon?
"You could kill a man," my boyfriend quips, "with a spoon."
It’s 1966, I’m rather new to the girl-o-sphere,
so indulge these stoned, mock-macho bon mots. Fucking,
what am I thinking? Guys’ strutting maybe isn’t even aimed at us
chicks. They star in grisly drama (there’s a draft); we chattel wave
from the burning tower. Same as Troy, really: decorate their doomsday.
Spoon up the grief-soup, lick your plate. Then turn, salute the never-us:
atmosphere, Earth system, dark-carved whelm of my magical dream-wave.
Fuck glory, feathered or bare. Pull up your drawers. Now die undooming.
A Drinking Game
When it came to the treatment of diseases, the ancient Romans had no shortage of magical remedies . . . . Nails from tombs and crucifixions were sometimes even worn around the neck as talismans against fevers, malaria and evil spirits . . . [Bent] nails that had been strewn around burials . . . . [were thought] . . . to bind the spirits of the dead to the grave to keep them from wandering around.
— "'Death Nails' in Tomb Reveal an Occult Practice" by Franz Lidz, The New York Times, 3/28/2023
It’s zero hour. One Cause—never mind the causes.
A soldier says what he sees: "corpses, corpses, corpses."
Those sleek with the mother’s milk of spells and curses
(but science is real—we’re still waiting on fabulous cures)
pop mood pills in the ruins. Slava Chaos!
If only it would pass, this reeking chalice.
If only it could pass, this preposterous chalice.
Suppose the occulted causes
of putative chaos
were unveiled? Trench burial for the corpses
of the indigent. Stillborn. The despised incurables.
Nails filched from crucifixions counter curses,
authentic detail for the accursed
mise en scène. And here it comes again, the idiot chalice.
Good people jog in T-shirts, "Run for the Cure!"
But how can cures be one, or causes
straight? Stochastically strewn, these uncollected corpses
are a metonym for chaos—
but what if in the chaos
someone’s monetized the curses
that rend our enemies? (We shall harrow the dust with corpses,
slurp the dregs from this risible chalice!)
Ignoring such conundrums, the cause-
kings hold sway: technicians, when we wanted curanderas—
for isn’t it true that the most ingenious cures
predictably foster variant strains of chaos?
The quest to nail a definitive cause
of death never slowed the conglomerate curse
that dogs our days. If only it could pass, this overdetermined chalice!
If only we didn’t share our beds with corpses.
No magic nail has power anymore to keep the corpses
lying flat. They warned you years ago: there is no cure.
If only it could pass, this illustrious chalice,
last mouthfuls laced with Gehenna’s signature chaos.
And yet. When riding a curse
down the chute of contemptible causes,
treat courteously with corpses. Solve for chaos.
As if who can’t be cured might yet be healed, trim your curses
like sails. Lift the ferocious chalice, sum and tomb of omnipotent causes.
The post Soon We’ll All Be Doomscrolling on Mars appeared first on Electric Literature.
