Jeff Whitney
When Alexander Saw the Breadth of His Domain, He Wept
In the documentary about a man trying to make a horror movie
things keep going wrong. The old theater where he wanted to shoot
the death scene has burned down, and he can’t get his uncle
to say his one line right. Also the pursuit of money keeps
getting in the way of the pursuit of art. Look behind him,
and the sky is always grey. Like it is now, as I just remembered
the mouse that leapt out of the garbage can one night
and landed on my hand for the length of an eighth
of a heartbeat, then dove beneath the dishwasher.
I could feel the faintest residual scratch of its tiny nails
on my skin. Poor mouse. Probably embarrassed.
Like getting walked in on in a public bathroom.
There are things you don’t want the world to see.
Like your movie, your life’s work, coming apart
in front of a documentary crew. Or the snow leopard
not finding a mate while a million stones look on.
It’s all embarrassing, trying. It’s why we give gold and silver
stars to children when they bring a scene to life, little sun
peeking from the top right corner of the paper, crown
descending from the heavens as though that could
happen. That time in our life my wife called Loser
Season, in a house that was a century old, broke, spiders
opened their arms like neighbors in an old country
releasing their shutters to another dark morning.
Is this what trying is? Lighting, ambient noise, a dog
barking in the distance because we’re outside.
Praise disco, or any way to be a monkey
that is happy. But I want to know what to do
with myself, right now, with all this doubting.
I’m sorry, mouse, for later killing you, or at least
I think that was you. I’m sorry about the ways we haunt
places, and make them ours. Maybe I can explain
with acoustic guitar laid over the top, a beautiful
spare thing to complement this sun I am drawing,
above a tree with red fruit, next to a house
that is two windows with a door in the middle,
and green grass sticking up into the air like worms
rising from the dirt, a few lower case ms in the air
to symbolize birds. The scene goes on called movie
that wasn’t made. It’s a miniature flag waving
at the side of a grave. Or how Alexander didn’t
weep when he saw the breadth of his domain
he held out both arms to form with his hands
a camera lens, closing one eye to assess his shot,
tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth
like any true artist walking among the dry bones
of how we were on earth, and might still be.
things keep going wrong. The old theater where he wanted to shoot
the death scene has burned down, and he can’t get his uncle
to say his one line right. Also the pursuit of money keeps
getting in the way of the pursuit of art. Look behind him,
and the sky is always grey. Like it is now, as I just remembered
the mouse that leapt out of the garbage can one night
and landed on my hand for the length of an eighth
of a heartbeat, then dove beneath the dishwasher.
I could feel the faintest residual scratch of its tiny nails
on my skin. Poor mouse. Probably embarrassed.
Like getting walked in on in a public bathroom.
There are things you don’t want the world to see.
Like your movie, your life’s work, coming apart
in front of a documentary crew. Or the snow leopard
not finding a mate while a million stones look on.
It’s all embarrassing, trying. It’s why we give gold and silver
stars to children when they bring a scene to life, little sun
peeking from the top right corner of the paper, crown
descending from the heavens as though that could
happen. That time in our life my wife called Loser
Season, in a house that was a century old, broke, spiders
opened their arms like neighbors in an old country
releasing their shutters to another dark morning.
Is this what trying is? Lighting, ambient noise, a dog
barking in the distance because we’re outside.
Praise disco, or any way to be a monkey
that is happy. But I want to know what to do
with myself, right now, with all this doubting.
I’m sorry, mouse, for later killing you, or at least
I think that was you. I’m sorry about the ways we haunt
places, and make them ours. Maybe I can explain
with acoustic guitar laid over the top, a beautiful
spare thing to complement this sun I am drawing,
above a tree with red fruit, next to a house
that is two windows with a door in the middle,
and green grass sticking up into the air like worms
rising from the dirt, a few lower case ms in the air
to symbolize birds. The scene goes on called movie
that wasn’t made. It’s a miniature flag waving
at the side of a grave. Or how Alexander didn’t
weep when he saw the breadth of his domain
he held out both arms to form with his hands
a camera lens, closing one eye to assess his shot,
tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth
like any true artist walking among the dry bones
of how we were on earth, and might still be.
The Dead Don't Haunt Us
Maybe our great talent was making friends
into strangers or paper doll chain of “Who was that
again?” The dead don’t like our unseriousness.
They have written so many instruction manuals
with their lives which everyday burn up, sort of like an angel
gaining wings when a bell rings but in reverse.
Rather than dopamine-poor the dead are futuristic
mimicking the cantaloupe, as that may be all the rage
in a future where people keep asking “Then what?” and “How
did that make you feel?” so conversations go on too long
by today’s standards but maybe just right by theirs.
You can imagine being dead by picking up a stranger from the airport
(you’re an extra in a film where someone arrives in a new city),
suddenly rediscovering the limits of the alphabet writing their name
on cardboard and running out of space, the vertebrae of letters
smashing into each other like train cars into a rockface with a painted-
on tunnel, and not having any more cardboard to work with.
The scene is over and the movie goes on, you’re driving
back to headquarters, the city passing by is the city of
the living. The dead don’t haunt us but they slow
things down. They’re the murderer returning to the tombstone
of a person they’d hoped to kill but never got around to.
Maybe I’m wrong; we are haunted, but only by videos of parties
of tech companies in the 90s celebrating the release of this or that
system or chip. Oh, yes, please, disease me with knowing
the chemical composition of gas clouds in space or what Katie
from high school is doing. She was so beautiful, and because
I didn’t know her well, which is to say, at all,
became in my eyes what was unfair to expect: the living hand of god
making the tides shift, brushing away gray clouds, fogging each brain
with a benevolent warmth. I ran into her yesterday and by her account
she feels like Super Mario with one heart left in the upper corner
of her life. It was like watching the slow-motion destruction
of a golden temple or the immolation of a great library in antiquity,
and I hate desecration, which is one more thing we must have
in common with the dead. Because we are not dead things
keep announcing themselves but it’s hard to hear, as The Scuttle Theory
suggests we’re too busy scuttling to notice stars falling
around us like hail stones. That’s okay. We’re on this unicycle
trying to paint an egg yellow and blue, a spring scene, balancing it
on a comically long spoon, and somewhere in the distance a starting gun goes off
and you can’t remember if you signed up for a race but now
you’re racing through a world where ninety years after her death Marie Curie’s
body is still radioactive, like some monster hovering in the corner
of a living person’s thoughts who’s snorted too much lightning,
like a wolf in Madagascar, and it’s going to do a lot of things
no one can really understand but in time will come to be known
as Experience C, just before D, which is the ghost of a wolf
befriending a man in the forest. It’s a rub-your-belly-pat-your-head
until it’s a pat-your-belly-rub-your-head while reciting
“Mary had a little wolf…” then I can’t remember which is more
unsettling: crack an egg on your head and let the yolk run down
or stab a knife in your back and feel the blood drip down…
I don’t know what happens next. I know I loved a lot of things.
You too, probably. And in the race to be the next one dead
we can hope, along the way, for cake with too much frosting
and symphonies in the air like an outdoor shopping mall
where we make interesting gestures and ask one another “then
what?” as we learn that walking behind any snail in motion
with sparklers in both hands is technically a parade.
into strangers or paper doll chain of “Who was that
again?” The dead don’t like our unseriousness.
They have written so many instruction manuals
with their lives which everyday burn up, sort of like an angel
gaining wings when a bell rings but in reverse.
Rather than dopamine-poor the dead are futuristic
mimicking the cantaloupe, as that may be all the rage
in a future where people keep asking “Then what?” and “How
did that make you feel?” so conversations go on too long
by today’s standards but maybe just right by theirs.
You can imagine being dead by picking up a stranger from the airport
(you’re an extra in a film where someone arrives in a new city),
suddenly rediscovering the limits of the alphabet writing their name
on cardboard and running out of space, the vertebrae of letters
smashing into each other like train cars into a rockface with a painted-
on tunnel, and not having any more cardboard to work with.
The scene is over and the movie goes on, you’re driving
back to headquarters, the city passing by is the city of
the living. The dead don’t haunt us but they slow
things down. They’re the murderer returning to the tombstone
of a person they’d hoped to kill but never got around to.
Maybe I’m wrong; we are haunted, but only by videos of parties
of tech companies in the 90s celebrating the release of this or that
system or chip. Oh, yes, please, disease me with knowing
the chemical composition of gas clouds in space or what Katie
from high school is doing. She was so beautiful, and because
I didn’t know her well, which is to say, at all,
became in my eyes what was unfair to expect: the living hand of god
making the tides shift, brushing away gray clouds, fogging each brain
with a benevolent warmth. I ran into her yesterday and by her account
she feels like Super Mario with one heart left in the upper corner
of her life. It was like watching the slow-motion destruction
of a golden temple or the immolation of a great library in antiquity,
and I hate desecration, which is one more thing we must have
in common with the dead. Because we are not dead things
keep announcing themselves but it’s hard to hear, as The Scuttle Theory
suggests we’re too busy scuttling to notice stars falling
around us like hail stones. That’s okay. We’re on this unicycle
trying to paint an egg yellow and blue, a spring scene, balancing it
on a comically long spoon, and somewhere in the distance a starting gun goes off
and you can’t remember if you signed up for a race but now
you’re racing through a world where ninety years after her death Marie Curie’s
body is still radioactive, like some monster hovering in the corner
of a living person’s thoughts who’s snorted too much lightning,
like a wolf in Madagascar, and it’s going to do a lot of things
no one can really understand but in time will come to be known
as Experience C, just before D, which is the ghost of a wolf
befriending a man in the forest. It’s a rub-your-belly-pat-your-head
until it’s a pat-your-belly-rub-your-head while reciting
“Mary had a little wolf…” then I can’t remember which is more
unsettling: crack an egg on your head and let the yolk run down
or stab a knife in your back and feel the blood drip down…
I don’t know what happens next. I know I loved a lot of things.
You too, probably. And in the race to be the next one dead
we can hope, along the way, for cake with too much frosting
and symphonies in the air like an outdoor shopping mall
where we make interesting gestures and ask one another “then
what?” as we learn that walking behind any snail in motion
with sparklers in both hands is technically a parade.