ROBERT ERIC SHOEMAKER
TERRARIUMS
It is very difficult to describe your first kiss; it is immensely easier to
describe the first time you encountered a cellular phone. The phone
is a transaction and one does not need to describe it because it is a
thing that everyone knows and has and understands, and you know
that the phone understands you. You do not carry it. Whereas a kiss
is something entirely new and unexpected. When you are
inexperienced and you kiss someone, you normally ask them first if
they want to kiss, which adds an immense amount of awkwardness
and tension and suspense. And then you lean in, and you try to kiss,
but sometimes you get their ear. Sometimes you actually don’t make
contact because they are afraid. A phone is not afraid. A phone in the
New World is like a credit card, it is like a water bottle, it is like
concrete, it is not like a meadow that you’ve never seen, where you
lie down with your best friend or someone you have never met and
try to kiss or make love. It is probably old fashioned to make love.
One day I hope we will lie down together in a meadow after we’ve
thrown our phones into the river. I’ve never seen a river, but I’ve
heard they are muddy and full of pigshit waste.
***
intersections of a computer chip, the
motherboard a grid of rubber plasticly
intertwining intersections of sand and grit
grit grit the crossroads of perception, a field
of mind and matters, not the formulaic
perception of intersecting gridlines on a
schoolboy’s graph paper—
In the New World, there is communication. Constant constant communication and community engagement. We are lucky to be living in such a New World. We are lucky indeed to be living in such a New World.
he draws a line, it is an arc, it is a text
message flung across the void that winks
and she intercepts it But is the
motherboard forgotten, the plasticity of
constructing meaning Is she the mother of
the child, the phone’s core Mother mother
we forget to honor your grit grit your sand
epochs and stained surfaces even as you
scribble the dirt into mountains Mother
mother attempts to warns us of
technotastrophe and livelihood you are the
matrix of sand the field of mind we perceive
as matter on gridlines on a schoolboy’s
graph paper and we expect mother to LO
descend from the sky uproot from the soil
show us folly and how the intersections
work—gridded lines flown into one matrix Mother
Bore(d) us into perception and computers
birthed, so, now, we have a new internet
now mother to thrive off but the
intersection of these mothers other
mothers’ mothers mother forgotten by the
end of the epoch of anthropoceneity Forget
the flash the bomb forget the starvation
the plume hellfire we are eaten by our own
gridlines our own
We are all cells in the body of the community of the country of the microchip of the planet of the New World.
impermeable creations the creations of our
phantasmal minds— do not forget the
interception the perception of the text of
the mother of ozone scribbles the ice flows
south to melt we must not imagine the tex
t of the argument to be anything but but but
mediation from the matrix of imagined
perception We are the rubber plasticly
entwining the snakes on the staff we heal
our own earth or we drown under it slowly
The text is intercepted from lover to lover
and it shows the cropped image of his fatal
diadem The mother lets it through, her
stilled waters permeate the message
Something in the recipient is questioning if
it was meant to be this way or if someone
forced this upon her but isn’t her distraction
the sex of the sand silt the earth
Isn’t the sex the matter
Does mother sex us or the embedding of
the chip?
***
You write the earth; it is no longer the earth. You wright the sun, it
no longer shines. You right the moral, you wrong the intellectual. Or
the religious. You no longer care which side of the planet you spin
on. You are walking down a darkness that you cannot pierce. You
look up and you see from the shine on your pen the stars that reflect
light back to you. You think no, not reflect, but create light. You are
the light that is left; you are the problem also. You know this.
Food comes from the city and the city feeds the people; food in the belly and people in the basket.
You walk anyway, down a dozen streets intersecting and a dozen
corridors. You know this is a dream. You do not care that it is a
dream, but you persist in thinking yes, this is a dream. You look at
your hand; your hair is matted from the oil permeating the
atmosphere. You look into a mirror. Your face is not your own. Your
pen is reflecting the light from the bulbs that light the cell. You are
dreaming. You do not understand that the dream is the same as
reality. You are climate, changing. You consume. You put out,
sometimes. You do not think about any of these things. You rarely
think about anything. You are postmodernism. You are also classical,
but you are only classical in form, you are not reacting to the earth as
is. You want to write of something else. You want to right something.
You want to wright something other than a tweet. You know that
tweets are now obsolete. You live in a time when no one talks. You
are the one who never talks, to the earth, to your brother. You are
the spinning planet in a vortex of darkness. You are sure there is a
light switch somewhere. You remember, yes, we are also post-oil.
You remember you are post. You know that the streaks on your face
are from crying. You do not remember crying. You do not remember
what you would want to cry about, or if you have ever cried. You
have implanted tear ducts.
***
a star a star has fallen and falling apart it
reacts in angles imploding on angles to a
superb backdrop of brown and brownblack
universal enmity the angular enmity of
falling is collecting on the vortex of the
spine stardust is the star’s dust is the spine
on the universal brownblack brown black
brow and imagine just imagine a moment
that you are that brown stardust the
descent from heaven to earth inarticulate in
the dusty nature of your make makeup Up
there you were a star emitting and the
falling apart made you to dust and that dust
is brown brows making your angles
We are all cells in the body of the community of the country of the microchip of the planet of the New World.
contract The enmity of the universe is that
you must work and walk your whole life to
recognize the dust of a star that your spine
is on which is built the vortex of the magic
of your persona You are falling from the sky
your lines blur not not angular but rather
linear and arcs can be lines in this universe
the falling up makes your dusty faceparts
spring back together and in death do you
part from your dusty body but you will
know you were once an elemental of star’s
dust a brown and black bit able to emit
lightning on the backdrop of angles
beautiful your curves beautiful your
jawbones beautiful your brown hair your
mouse nose beautiful your emitting joy
beautiful your teeth your laughter beautiful
your black shirt beautiful your red shoes
beautiful your hooded sweater with
epaulettes beautiful your blindness
beautiful your mother tongue beautiful
your inflatable boat beautiful your dead
father beautiful He is now dust and his
bones will be brown dust but your memory
of him, a star, beautiful.
Food comes from the city and the city feeds the people; food in the belly and people in the basket.
***
When time began, it may have been possible to express something
other than frustration. When time began, it’s possible that there was
no frustration. Frustration has grown out of the present, and the
present is a container. A container, like a mason jar, is full of acid.
Acid eats away at your insides with heartburn, and you do not know
what you ate that causes this frustration. You ate something or it ate
you. Something is eating away at your throat, too, and you barely
remember having a throat. Your throat was sore once, but you don’t
remember being sick. Sickness is all around us, all around the globe
and it has maybe stopped spinning. You think about spinning on the
merry-go-round. You remember something about a mulberry bush.
You know that you are not part of a bush, do not remember ever
seeing a bush. Perhaps it is that bushes are a figment of someone’s
imagination. Maybe it was a mulberry bush. In your fantasies, you
picture a bush, something thorny and all irregular. There are no
irregularities anymore. You picture in your mind something thorny
because you’ve never cut your finger on anything. You have never
cut yourself. Pain is not a thing that you are sure you’ve ever
experienced. Experience is rather cut and dry, after all. Dry like
salmon skin. You remember that you ate salmon skin maki, and
perhaps that was the source of the heartburn because wasabi does
strange things to you. You have very strange dreams. You hope that
these dreams mean something, but experience has taught you that
nothing means anything. Anything can be a container, but what is
contained within is likely as not to be rather dull and mindless. You
walk the streets mindlessly sometimes because no one is looking at
each other so why should you?
***
Tendril and vibrant echo in the forest
wrapping itself around your foot dragging
you in no no no the bloom around your foot
a tendril of the noxious woods eke ekeing
out blooms
We are all cells in the body of the community of the country of the microchip of the planet of the New World.
of poison and dragging you
deeper down down under loam under
detritus until you’re drowning under the sea
of dirty dirt Just then when you are closing
your eyes you feel the touch of water
closing in on your bare feet bare feet
touching a blossom of water beneath the
sea of dirty dirt, a sea of clear blue water
This is where, you think, the lake once was,
the oil cemented over it and dirty dirt grew
upon it then you saw it a tendril blooming
under the feet of the trees that struggled to
reach above the ruins Now you know you
now know the green grows from an obvious
place, above, noxious, below sediment,
liquidous You no longer care that it
dragged you under by the feet Only that it
lets you stay.
***
There is a warrant out, and you know that you are
extremely dangerous. It is entirely possible that this is
the first warrant you have seen for the arrest of a
human entity in the New World. It is possible that you
may attempt to kill you, or worse, touch you and
infect you. You are classified “highly dangerous.”
Potentially armed. It is difficult to say what your
motivation is for bringing the illness back
Food comes from the city and the city feeds the people; food in the belly and people in the basket.
to the New World- it is said on good authority that
you recently visited a country outside your
understanding and you returned with something
foreign. You do not know how you can avert
catastrophe, and so, you have issued this warrant that
allows you and encourages you to use force to bring
yourself in. When you bring yourself in, do not under
any circumstances touch. If you make contact, you will
be quarantined permanently. If you are still alive. If
you must shoot, shoot to kill. You cannot allow the
disease to infect. Under no circumstances are you to
engage. You are known to be very persuasive. Do not,
again, engage. Shoot to kill.