Mediastinum

—Jesse Ball, Census

In one segment of the landscape, a hyena drags her clitoris

across the plains, a dust perfuming up. Cicadas pulse the segment,

a femur filled with rain. It is a lush grassland within which

the greens have sprouted through the exposed joints of animals.

This seems to be a metaphor for growth and resistance. A

single singed dollar rolls through the wind. I read

a book that imagines, among other things, a world without

trees. I wrote a book that imagines, among other things, a world

without men. The book splayed open on my parents’ dresser,

an early part of the book. People do this when they no longer

want to see information. I no longer want to see information.

In another segment, a series of weasel oil candles, such is

the cure-all in this aspect of land. Mostly the candles are not

lit. At night the moon makes the earth shine like bottle

flies, a glimmer here and there where a lachrymose flame

continues on. A god peeks past the clit of the hyena

disapprovingly, as evidenced by their glare and nod. But I

want a god to glare and nod. I want a god to do anything at all

with my debts. In another segment, my grandmother

lives and she watches a pack of lionesses feasting inside

the rib cage of a zebra. At first, she tells us, she believes

the zebra to be sleeping on her side, but the lions move

her skin under the membrane of bones.

It’s like I always say: The evenings wait for the kind of

death we get and we are so very fond of the evenings.

In another segment, the last one, we know it to be last

because a single woman is braiding her hair in a desert.

We have been here before. An animal raises her leg.