Immortal Memory

Sick in childhood, I wouldn’t mind a can of Campbell’s Scotch Broth,
a kinder soup than others, thick with barley, carrots, potato,
and the occasional fragment of mutton you would want to pace out
start to finish thoughtfully but not to the point you would take great pride

in managing it just right or feel woeful if you made an error and the last
few spoonfuls were meatless. Warhol included Scotch Broth
among the 32 varieties of soup in his original Campbell Soup Cans series
in 1962 and again in 1969’s smaller second series, which included

the unimaginable Hot Dog Bean as well as Oyster Stew, an item
I construed as adults-only, to be eaten by flappers and gents in tuxedos.
American, my sense of reality rests on top of mass-produced products
and takes a hit when they’re discontinued, as Scotch Broth was in 2010

due to low demand. This is what we go to war for; this is democracy
in action. If it stands in the way of profit, there’s no reason
not to kill it, whether it’s an outdated soup, a laudable concept, a species
of fish, certain categories of person, or just one of them trying to prevent

a corrupt government agency from terrorizing the people of a city,
a state, the whole sick country. It was a Sunday. I was 3,000 miles away
in Scotland on Burns’s birthday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
had shot and killed an ICU nurse after pinning him down on the pavement.

Scottish Insomnia

I picked up this book by a poet I admire but found it self-dramatizing
and ultimately -deceptive, tricking itself into thinking ugliness
was evidence of truth and moral courage, when what it put forward as truth
was wildly selective, and “managed” in a way that left me with great doubts

about its bedrock. All this surprised me. Not because I expected
more from the author, but because I’ve never really known myself
to take issue with such things, at least not in poetry, which I tend to approach
as neither true nor false, but intricately designed, with the seemingness

of truth as one of many resources it has access to, as much as it does
hyperbole, ellipsis, historical fact, speculation, chance, and the absolute
invention of the author—whatever they require when standing at the cliff-edge
of composition. Similarly, while on a solitary hike last week

in inadequate footwear, I found myself facing this sheer embankment
along the rim of a ravine, grasping at anything in front of me that might
save me from the plummet: saplings, surface roots, long skeins of ivy,
and a holly bush I wrested a sprig off as keepsake of my victory over death.

I left it on impulse on my windowsill to ward off devils, only to discover
via google search that it would also be used this way historically.
Have you ever trusted your weight to a holly bush barehandedly in winter?
It will pepper you in wee lacerations. See these palms? I offer them as proof.

Velouté

Equal parts butter and flour to make a roux, but in the spell of it, I think
what if everyday objects have been soaking up consciousness
from flakes of it shed by their owners all along, and appliances like blenders
have only 3%, and desks have maybe 12, but the mattress weighs

in with something freakish, like 47—which is just about as much
consciousness as I can handle waking up, the velvety quell of sleep
still draped on me like the vestment a priest wears when he dreams
he rides a black horse into the distance as palm trees burst into flame.

No one worry about anything tonight! We don’t need riches; let the rich
rot in their beach houses, or on their spaceships; let the rich rot
wherever they may be. But the beach house, start there—the rich love
to feel it on their faces, salt air eating off their faces, each and every day.

Now stop! We can’t go on like this. We might need something later,
something only the rich possess. We might require resources
hoarded by the very rich—and they’ll hold this against us, they’ll make us
make a spectacle of groveling for any change they toss our way, repeating

Don’t you regret what you just said, all that nonsense about us rotting
and the salt air eating off our faces? Did you think it would persuade us,
high on our spaceships, to sponsor you in your need, when even God is
in our pocket, your president’s our puppet, and the masses melt into the sea?

Amor Fati

If the improved form of living never catches on, I’m certain to be hurt
but I won’t be too surprised. Those who have seen sick oaks
anchored in a dry plane of existence struck by a thunderbolt and burn
down like an empire into the past perfect tense might sense an inkling

of what I’m feeling, but not its full frontier, which is closer to a swell
of hopelessness before some portrait of historical inevitability
laced round the neck with awe, image of a company where best practices
insist that none of us take things personally, even if we can trace

unique relevance to our person, its pursuit. Societal forces are constantly
beating at the door, walking around the farmhouse with torches
and promotional banners, and otherwise making it difficult to achieve
a good night’s sleep, which even horses know makes all the difference.

And I won’t be taken aback when the official report says the farmer
torched his home himself in protest of the whole setup, an act
expressive of his willingness to sacrifice what villagers had wagered
he would do anything to protect. But what no one could have guessed

was that a week or two before, he had uncovered a letter in the blue
cursive of his youth—self-addressed, never sent—in which this exact
sequence of events had been forecast, a warning on white wove that the future
will repeat the past in the present, and we will only read about it after.