the
X walked into the ocean
producing
a foam which was born
at
the center of the underwater city
a
terror overtook me
both
the golden bowl and sweet
silver
cord severed smashed
perhaps
or something even
darker
distilled knowledge
of
psychic groove forgave
us
this shake i must pull my
self
into a tight wad and shake
until
the cord unhands me or
until
someone arrives shaking
and
says hello what’s going
on
snaps me back loosening tremble
and
lost forward still the year
was
gone trotting forward in
collections
of books higher
level
wellnesses and edibles
taken
with every member of
my
immediate family under
the
table under the gloss of
photogenic
skies blondes in
droves
came to my aid with
the
sun and under heaven do
not
think about above not
quite
yet for the sliver of
self
left winnowing in the world
must
first traverse its many
soft
lives its stupid
and
virtuous problems
newly
wounded and crust
addressed
to the oceanic city
years
of absence from any
thing
remotely dependent
upon
life as in the pumping
of
blood from the heart out
into
the rest of the body the
most
delicious journey
the
book was about “reality”
horse
of the king every promise
of
angel or healer each passage
ever
read by Walter Benjamin or
Mary
Reufle each item in the fridge
that
i labelled mine each hallucination
drawered
and swept each driver of mad
ness
and heliacal centers “material world”
is
not all bad nor is it nor is it nor is it
so
too begin the loosening of the spinal
cord
by the fishes who wanted
hallucinatory
and collective swims
feel
the body come loose beginning with
the
sponge of the spinal cord sopping
in
ocean water and getting saltier
and
energized at the golden hands of the lion
for
what enclosure of central nervous
system
be of fist and passing of thoracic
which
rave-up the fluid container
for
our hypoglossal thirty face
surgical
removal of everything requiring
land-oxygen
any
earthly fluid any copper
pipe
faucet or splash the function
was
autonomic and automatic bone
resulting
in relief the angels spoke
directly
to my brain which as they
said
was insulted and damaged
the
repairs came in red glitzes
of
semi-lightning deep magnetic
pain
of release and then a cavernous
sleep
no one exactly believed
me
but how could i blame them
as
up until a few hours prior
i
had not believed that angels
could
perform surgery of silver
cord
and spinal golden bowl
and
reparation with singing
and
vibratory nuances from
the
archive in the sky streaming
into
my fluid releasing any need
for
a nervous system for any
cord
or delete the whole system
was
wet with the terror of carrying
a
message of such pelagic tenor
Emmalea Russo’s books are G (Futurepoem) and Wave
Archive (Book*hug). She was a writer in residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural
Council and the 18th Street Arts Center, and a visiting writer at the Art
Academy of Cincinnati and Parsons School of Design. Recent writing has appeared
or is forthcoming in Artcritical,
BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Cosmopolitan, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review
of Books, and SF MOMA's OPEN
SPACE. She is a practicing astrologer and sees clients, writes, and
podcasts on astrology and art at the Avant-Galaxy
