Entanglement
1 (overture/ phlegm)
Phantom flash/ limb sensation/ to tremble
Those who survived the fire
We can only name these things with the tongues and melodies of our enemies
Red like freshly-blown glass
Try this for a riddle:
A sun halfway through the sky
And if you just woke up?
It would be a neutral (wax/ wane)
Set/rise binary, directionless
The sort of thing you’re not sure is real
Because it happens simultaneously
You wouldn’t know until you asked for directions
Which way the arc was falling
Not this start and not this day
A dream in motion if you’re lucky
2 (signal/ locked room)
I saw from the window of a train
A man lying on the ground
Heat-stroked or overdosed, facedown
And a boy, just barely pubescent
Standing beside him, expressionless
The train rolled on through the outskirts
Here is a portent said the moment
A tarot card: the mute
I felt the smoke of the southern deathcamps then
Not the zeitgeist but rather the future-ghost
Die zukünftiger Geist might be how you say, the entanglement
A rippling
Metal and dust
A Schrodinger object
We are what we ignore
Throw this language on the fire with the rest of them
I’ll pick up the pieces when they cool
After Saint Mark’s Bronze Horses In Venice, Where I’ve Never Been
A certain holding close of one’s breath (like a buttonless jacket in the cold) is bound to happen when passing below the-bridge-of-sighs, one of many: hogs to the long slaughter preserved on an apricot pit sharp edge
Our bare feet gliding over hunger stones placed to appear when the river gets low, cityscape steaming on the water
Where bronze horses displayed in the plaza seem to turn at dusk like a sundial in reverse: photograph of a fire curling and vanishing into white air
You can picture though: the sacking of the city, where they placed a crucifix on a hill with a plaque to commemorate the winners
Stone lapped with wind/ I cross myself or rather my shadow, the motion: north star, then south, then right and left, and to finish it you spit theatrically
An ornamentation to distance the eventual
I have been nowhere/ but this/ desert
I am a stripped nowhere hauled in from the east on the backs of flatbed trucks
I am a nowhere horse poured in gold to catch the light
Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
About the illustrator: Edward Lee is an artist whose poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Lewis Milne, Orson Carroll, Blinded Architect, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website can be found here.
