Paul Corman-Roberts

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.  

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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.