From “Anagrams” [xiii]
But not before several undisputed stone-cold classics. This is why we keep writing about Cain: for all its self-indulgent flaws it just gets it so right sometimes. Every standard element is here: the gang is still drinking far too many cocktails in one sitting, Cain is a hypocrite, Adah exists only to be interpreted by the men, Father K is so borderline incoherent you almost wonder if he’s a malfunctioning robot. So what’s changed? I think it’s the widening of the lens, the micro to the macro. By this point they’ve all pretty much given up
on their evening away from the overthrew and ing it in ruins puppet-board of means we can
at what is hap- city, and it’s not demilitarized,
to confirm the word as bond. grinding their with the recog- cial authorities is
classes, walking university they took over, leav- with a useless directors. This look, once again, pening to their good. Officially this only stands emptiness of Everyone is teeth. Reasoning nized or unoffi- like attempting
Cain, though broadsheet in dialogue, harbors tabloid thoughts. A doughnut of prurience. I had Adah misconstrued (5th/6th Manhattan). T/K: Her worth, her “no tent” theme. The red toothbrush threshing deconsecrated earth, boycotted labyrinths. Hot thin chef, overworked an- tihero of the bathysphere, I need you to be yourself today. Thoth went, font-born, on farmland. The mortar swiveled on the hill. Demilitarized, huh? Oh how vehe- ment, Heavenward.
to plough a field with a toothbrush. The overworked chef had finally produced something delicious and, this week at least, it was a labyrinth we didn’t want to boycott. T/K is journalistic shorthand for “to come,” indicating a forthcoming addition to the text. (TK is a rare formation of letters and therefore would not be confused with continuous language as “to come” might). Thoth, one of the gods of the Egyptian pantheon, has either an ibis or a baboon head. Arbitrator of disputes between other gods and the system of writing.
This poem is part of a larger sequence. You can read the rest in the June 2016 issue of Poetry.
