Daniel C. Remein
exergue
the next time we go to the moon
it will be because the last time
all time was food and all the meat
we swallowed looked up, didn’t look
down it takes it like a man is
the last cloud of shamefulness you
ever invited inside. class
instruction: the rocket you
lick because it slips between bricks
in the ruin of a future
only the soviet women
will expose she gets up, puts on
her shoes because we moderns know
how to interlace breasts of queens
with vacuum tubes and crushed limestone.
we do all of this, you know, for
nostalgia. the tripartite love
for cotton skins and redheads
pieces together what happens:
in tailored flaps like lips that say
lips have of it no way to know
except an internal closing
vowel—not the launch of cities
not the barge that hoists my feelings.
preamble slows down to a crawl,
doesn’t walk anymore on feet,
backs down the mouth to a palette
and remembers clearly saying
straight to video, the slogan
of revolutionary life.
remember it well for the launch:
say again that rocketfuel is
kingly and provincial. we smoke
past all the teachers i had loved
when variable was fertile
when tenderly you put me on
time and muscle we bind like books
with you. read: around a techné
i am wrapped in this ribbon your
pedagogy. and you will find
that it is better by design
and it works hard to press shut last
portals. i can only warn you.
instances of river-crossing
happen where we cut our mettle,
reaping sound from the flattened floor
of an empty type foundry.