Over Corpse Roads

“How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!”

— Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson, “[I’m Nobody! Who are you?]” Stanza 2, Lines 1–4 (Lines 5–8 overall), in “Poems” of The Pocket Emily Dickinson: Edited by Brenda Hillman, published at Boulder, Colorado by Shambhala in 2024; page 26.)

“The face of the stone doesn’t know you,
nor does the black satin in which your body breaks down.”

— Federico García Lorca (Federico García Lorca, “Absent Soul,” Stanza 2, Lines 1–2 (Lines 5–6 overall), translated by Christopher Maurer, in “The 1980s and 1990s” of The FSG Poetry Anthology: Edited by Jonathan Galassi and Robyn Creswell, published at New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2021; page 116.)

“[B]ecause now I know that there is no receptacle on earth capable of containing the precious elixirs of my unquenchable thirst for ceremonial, ritual, and the sacred.”

— Salvador Dalí (Salvador Dalí, “September the 1st,” in “1960” of Diary of a Genius by Salvador Dalí: Foreword and Notes by Michel Déon: Translated from the French by Richard Howard, published at Garden City, New York by Doubleday & Company, Inc. in 1965; page 198.)

“They didn’t call themselves painters; they called themselves writers. Broadcasting your adopted name, however gnomic or illegible to those unschooled in the stylistics of graffiti, was a language act. Writing graffiti was not only an action in visual space but a gesture aloud, a signature on the city’s face. It was a way of flying both over and under the radar, of saying “I exist” and “I’m a secret” at the same time.”

— Jonathan Lethem (Jonathan Lethem, “Museum Pieces,” excerpted from Cellophane Bricks: A Life in Visual Culture, published at Houston by ZE Books in 2024, in “Readings” of Harper’s Magazine (August 2024), published online at New York by Harper’s Magazine Foundation in 2024.)

                         i.

All the whores are in their
finery tonight, immediately sacred in the
velvet cry of a throbbing brothel,
growing moans filling a glove, blown
loads bloating betrothal to a boned

throat strobing light unswallowed only to
glow what fluorescent show goes on
gutturally guttering-out intoning again and again,
spittled nothings, literal gushing, spilled lush,
splintered lascivious, razor-edged brusque, sputtering the

unutterable awful, soul-pulling ring, ‘Let it
flower,’ lewd, abusive, Brutalist geometric music,
shower-head-shaped, masturbatorily ergonomic, architecturally dreadful structure
of blistering lyrics no one wants
to steal, known as a hymn

to the unconquered sun, gunning down
rhythm glittering to feel intimate with
the distant voice unsung, its violent
hum one confronts wintering in some
long moment of suffering wanting its

own departing more than sustaining something
unpleasant, this is the art of
the heart restarted, reaching its beaten
peak reaching out just to let
go, so you can straighten up

                         ii.

now, don’t you know? we’ve made
the curve, blurring a blonde voice
enduring never returning home, exposing its
ache in the ovoid shape of
honey tones borne across the void

by a hollow voice echo alone
consumes, parched, arched unswallowed verbal alcohol
alcoved at home in the vainglorious
abode of a broken phone, garbled
à propos of letting go, more

potent yet less dangerous now no
one comes around to endure the
show, this ghosting about which the
business of sex tiptoes, coke-nailing, coughing,
confusing glow for warmth, allure for

trust, using jewellers’ tools to work
on each worn tooth a new
dental miracle for thieves to prove
these smiles they steal are guns
fronting gems gums conceal until summoned

by someone to become real big
problems when on the run from
kisses promised but never given, blunting
dagger tongues driven over corpse roads
hanging Entwistle-inclined hovering, signing demise.