carrion humanity
—Wayne Koestenbaum
Have I inadvertently rewritten humanity
for humility? This was pages previous.
Such outrageous grievances that forge
within us each a growing ball of rubber
bands with ongoing and varying tensions.
To further grip my entirety, a rod the size
of a pencil that’s made its way to the
sharpener but once or twice, is stuck,
horizontal to the ground, having been
thrust fully into, until wholly beneath,
the skin just beneath the nape of my
neck. “It feels as if I’m being primed
for wall treatment.” Hung like a gory,
baroque painting, meanwhile, at a local
museum. It’s a tomb of some renown in
which a conveyor topped to maximum
capacity with fleshy gawkers of celebrity
are moved through tomb-like galleries
at only the speed that maximizes
capacity from entrance to exit,
where each body collapses. The
bodies sit until dusk, when they
are bulldozed, loaded into dump
trucks and driven to one of at
least a half a dozen garbage
heaps that rise in evenly inter
spersed locations in the
distance, each heap
at only the speed that maximizes
capacity from entrance to exit,
where each body collapses. The
bodies sit until dusk, when they
are bulldozed, loaded into dump
trucks and driven to one of at
least a half a dozen garbage
heaps that rise in evenly inter
spersed locations in the
distance, each heap
half a mile past
city limits.
