Robert Evory
Issue No. 11 • December 2013
My brother says,
when the blackbird is hungry
it is a part of you that is hungry;
and if there are two, part of you is hungry
and part of you isn’t. He says this as we drive to find
the highest point in Ohio. We pass it,
riddled in the roundabout hills of a corn field, unknowing,
into the city that packed the first concrete road (built now
our knowledge is innate).
We see how they vulcanize rubber
into thick blubber skin—
this is what existence is brother says
and pollination, and a nail
that keeps a boat afloat: we give rise
to us: we exist because we are made of other things he says:
we crack and break and reconstruct our… selves:
seven years and we have a new set of cells.
On the drive to Mammoth Cave we talk of time:
our ongoing hope on this side
of the coffin, our journey to heaven or hades, or the name
eternal nothing (if eternal is its name). But we decide talking
of time is a waste (we too are waste)—being
postured upon mountain apex, sucking a sexy nipple,
tunneling our body through earth, or rain singing
are highlights of some personal universe.
The road is part of you that is buried brother says;
the road is part of you that is moving I say.
We encase nuclear waste in concrete radio says:
that will last ten thousand years I say
Uranium-238 has a half-life of four billion brother says.
When I say we
I mean you (and me), and also them, and
those people, us, orator, human, animal, universal
allegiance of those who suffer, that means all of us.
Our death has already happened. When you see
time as linear it is your fault multiple dimensions say (it is not like a road).
plate tectonics says, soon the road will crumble, be swallowed
and then be everywhere: it already is.
We are one with the road, we see the blackbird.