Free The Last Two Seconds by Mary Jo Bang Page B

CONTROVERSIES
    Psycho-sexual memories coalesce into a complex fear—
    I want, I am opposed to—every contrary desire becoming
    equally evident.
    Transference might be a masochistic shame-kiss signifier,
    or some sort of extreme narcissistic need.
    A normal form of defense could lead to a state of rage.
    Affective states could be performed on stage.
    Chaos could be suggested by something as humble, and
    as theatrical, as breaking glass.
    A human—face painted, dressed as a clock—could race
    time back to a start line
    and then be made to stand, face against the wall, and
    think and think and think: I am, I never will not be.

HERE’S WHAT THE MAPMAKER KNOWS
    O is the ocean and t the consequence
    of time at the edge of a landscape
    of dots plotted into the plane
    with a constant scale.
    Any place can be located and later divided
    by cultural and social data
    and sketched on a napkin—
    disregarding distance and leaving
    only the little one knows.
    Description is reductive: a shirt, buttons, a mind
    that is willing to enact its own explosive end.
    What idiocy the world is made of:
    fierce justifications, landmines and such,
    a rifle upright. An empire
    of uncommon horror: the human speaking,
    “Every moment all that matters is me.”
    Tick-tick in the drifting dark.

SCENE I: A HALL IN THE TEMPLE OF JUSTICE
    Verdi refused to write an overture
    for Aïda , or rather he first wrote a simple prelude
    and then replaced it with a potpourri variety
    overture but in the end refused to play it
    because of its “pretentious insipidity”—
    his words, or his words translated into English.
    What is translation? What is “insipidity”
    in Italian? Aïda is an Ethiopian princess
    who is captured and enslaved in Egypt.
    It’s a story of love and power but then
    what story isn’t? O patria mia. My dear country.



SURE, IT’S A LITTLE GAME. YOU, ME, OUR MINDS
    moving through time. Our heads acting
    like filters that filter ice in the winter,
    cicadas and such in the summer. A system of seeing
    through slats. And what is that, that flourish
    raising a ruckus of dust? A burr at the sock line
    takes a bite. Is that nice? Come here.
    Closer. Let’s play this way. Like fish that follow
    a regular beat. An ear at your chest might make sense
    of the beating, but instead, you’re face down,
    your face facing the fact of the Earth.
    Get up. Take a box and fill it with dirt.
    Reduce architecture back to a rock and a hard place.
    Tuck the idea of a buttress far into the future.
    “You can’t be there anymore,”
    he said. A lobotomy sever between two hemispheres.
    The symphony of scalpels quieted.
    Peru with one cup of clean water per person.
    A sliver of silver in an otherwise empty hand.
    Make a landfill that looks like a mountain.
    Leaves are falling on only one corner of the intersection.
    The cab swings by, takes a turn. And in the back,
    dark glasses make moot the issue of eyes. Is this
    what you wanted? A boardwalk with wood planks
    and squares at the edge, a chrome hat
    that comes with a collapsible rabbit.
    A hand keeps drawing a card that says go back
    to the cell you just flew from. Well, maybe it’s not a game
    but a coffin cover, the innocence project,
    bomb plots and wire strippers. Why make it dirty?
    The erotic potential of sheer stupidity,
    underneath which is someone in a suicide vest.
    The street signs seem both strange and familiar.
    In the distance, in a camera flash, dolls dressed in red.

WORN
    I’m wearing my waking threadbare
    while I’m waking up and walking
    in the park. A doctor once told me,
    A part of your life will be a room,
    a door that’s as long as consciousness.
    The form of the dream I just had
    is a fact. A serious talk. An inner
    outward. An animal dead, now
    reanimated. Maybe a river, or a lake.
    It makes me think that death is a view,
    whole, and nothing more tragic
    than a species of nonsense where ever
    is on a dimmer switch. It’s clear
    that this lever, this thingness, declines.

THE