The Lichtenberg Figures. Ben Lerner

is an anecdote

      in the mouth of a stillborn. And not reflection,

      with its bad infinitude, nor religion, with its eighth of mushrooms,

      can bring orgasm to orgasm like poetry. As a policy,

      we are generally sorry. But sorry doesn’t cut it.

      We must ask you to remove your shoes, your lenses, your teeth.

      We must ask you to sob openly.

      If it is any consolation, we admire the early work of John Ashbery.

      If it is any consolation, you won’t feel a thing.

      §

      I attend a class for mouth-to-mouth, a class for hand-to-hand.

      I can no longer distinguish between combat and resuscitation.

      I could revive my victims. I could kill a man

      with a maneuver designed to clear the throat of food. Tonight, the moon

      sulks at apogee. A bitch complains to the polestar. An enemy

      fills a Ping-Pong ball with Drano and drops it in the gas tank of my car.

      Reader, may your death strictly adhere to recognized forms.

      May someone place his lips on yours, shake you gently, call your name.

      May someone interlace his fingers, lock his elbows, and compress your chest,

      every two seconds, to the depth of one and one-half inches. In the dream,

      I discover my body among the abandoned tracks of North Topeka.

      Orlando Duran stands over me, bleeding from his eye. I can no longer distinguish

      between verb moods that indicate confidence and those that express uncertainty.

      An upward emergency calls away the sky.

      §

      Pleasure is a profoundly negative experience, my father

      was fond of saying underwater. His body was carried out

      like a wish. We paid our last respects

      as rent. The mere possibility of apology allows me to express

      my favorite wreck as a relation between stairs

      and stars. I take that back. To sum up, up

      beyond the lamp’s sweep, where a drip installed by heat

      still drips—some tender timbers. At thirteen, I had a series

      of dreams I can’t remember, although I’m sure

      that they involved a rape. I’m brutal because I’m naked,

      not because I’m named, a distinction

      that the scientific and scholarly communities,

      if not the wider public, should be expected to maintain.

      No additional media available (but isn’t it beautiful when a toddler manages to find and strike a match).

      §

      I invite you to think creatively about politics in the age of histamine.

      I invite you to think creatively about politics

      given men as they are: asthmatic, out of tune and time,

      out of bounds and practice. I invite you to run your mouth, to run your hands

      through my thin hair like a theme. I invite you to lean your head

      against my better judgment. Once uncertainty

      ran through these sketches like a Lab. Now, of my early work, a critic has said:

      “It was open, so I let myself in.” Ladies and gentlemen,

      tonight’s weather has been canceled. The Academy has condemned

      the blue tit. The poor are stealing the saltlicks. Grenades luxuriate

      in the garden of decommissioned adjectives. It is the Sabbath. I must invite you

      to lay down your knowledge claims,

      to lay them down slowly and with great sadness.

      Given men as they are, women pack snow into jars for the summer ahead.

      Given men as they are, the trees surrender.

      §

      I’m going to kill the president.

      I promise. I surrender. I’m sorry.

      I’m gay. I’m pregnant. I’m dying.

      I’m not your father. You’re fired.

      Fire. I forgot your birthday.

      You will have to lose the leg.

      She was asking for it.

      It ran right under the car.

      It looked like a gun. It’s contagious.

      She’s with God now.

      Help me. I don’t have a problem.

      I’ve swallowed a bottle of aspirin.

      I’m a doctor. I’m leaving you.

      I love you. Fuck you. I’ll change.

      §

      True, a great work takes up the question of its origins

      and lets it drop. But this is no great work. This is a sketch

      sold on the strength of its signature, a sketch

      executed without a trial. Inappropriately formal,

      this late work reflects an inability to swallow. Once

      my name suggested female bathers

      rendered in bright impasto.

      Now it is dismissed as “unpronounceable.”

      Polemical, depressed, these contiguous black planes