Pop Quiz for Yee
All that is left to do is
pray for rain.
- Lauren
Parker, “Dark Way Down”
Study Question:
Shouldn’t every good and blessed being get to have their
coming out party in the Upper Mojave?
No dear, it’s the Sonoran for you
& please spare us the indignity
of pretending we missed the bus
on accident.
The worst thing
a skin-walker could hope to assimilate
is someone with fashion sense,
this is how a Flagg turns British.
The locals expect us to taint
the adrenalin but in fact
it is the casing-fluid we target.
Chemistry is the left-handed
monkey wrench of the universe.
You are forced to fashion
your soundtrack from the AM
radio tide & the gussied up
cowpoke imprisoned
in a transmitting station
somewhere between Kingman
and Wickiup wailing
the palpable loneliness & betrayal
that can only be tasted on the wind
howling beneath the convex walls
of a canyon wash.
Even the warlocks
out here are on meth.
This is the only planet
that will tolerate them.
Study Question:
How in the hell did they manage to install a Searchlight
out here?
You could sell your Cadillac here in town
and live off the dirt-cheap rent forever
but that itself is a price you can’t afford to pay.
Every demon ever turned loose
in this frontier wound up homesteading
somewhere along and beneath the electric
transmission tower routes where the petroleum
and the electromagnetic anomalies
intersect in the portals all these wingnuts
are running around out here looking for.
Study Question:
Who was it that assembled this altar made of a severed
Barbie’s head and cracked rearview mirror on this Saguaro?
A storefront is always a pretense
to a portal. The emptier the store
the farther away the portal will take us.
Study Question:
How is it you abominations of the Spheres appropriated
and ran away with my evolutionary timeline?
You’re not the archetype
I began this road trip with.
You shifted or maybe
that was me.
Study Question:
How is it they installed a Searchlight out here before
they installed a Las Vegas?
The chlorinesphere is the bubble of moisture
depraved astronauts pass through on the outskirts
of the larger planets, a border one knows
they’ve crossed when the smell of petrichor
gives way to the small of swimming pools,
sweat and golf courses.
Back out in the wilderness of thirst is where
we began to understand how family members
begin to turn on each other. Marriage and divorce
are their own storefronts, their own commodified portals.
Too much energy stored
in all these ratty suitcases
we were always bound
to lose each other, on either
side of the Colorado, both
of us desiring to be desired
but nowhere near as much
as the river needs to be desired.
Study Question:
What year is this?
you blurt out.
the answer
unbearable
so we can
only scream
until they turn
out the lights.
Study Questions (multiple choice):
Was she your mother?
Your lover?
Your daughter?
Your adopted family?
Your bardo family?
Your sanctuary?
Naw brother, she is your sister
& you better believe she is heavy
the lot of us out here
on this chessboard shaped
like a desert tortoise
for the amusement
of a barely curtained god.
All your hunger
your thirst
your desire
is for some form
of blight light
wanting to eat itself
all in the name
of self-awareness.
And yes, you SHOULD wonder
about that gussied up cowpoke
over yonder. He could have been
anyone’s supper.
--------------------------------------------
Bio: Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of Bone Moon
Palace (Black Lawrence 2023) and the graphic chapbook The
Sincere (Libran Apocalypse Books, 2022) with illustrator Ray Swaney.
He is co-founder of Collapse Press and the monthly Zoomcast "The Friday
Collapse" with collaborator Lynn Alexander. He occasionally plays drums
for the U.S. Ghostal Service and The There Their They're.
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