They are indigenous in me, says Old green America.
The law says go west, and pick a plot of land, and build
an 8×10 house under shade of my law, and live there,
and the title of the land will stream into your fingers.
The country is still so new, the states must draw themselves
every morning, all real and future and possible states
draw themselves over the land. “This country is infested
with states,” say the settlers, “they crawl on their bellies
through the mud, have learned to look like their surroundings,
eat other states and their own young. They suffer like spiders
from ingrown silk; their backs are marked with one white star.”
We were counterfeiters before and have paper left over,
so we turn all our eyes to the west. The law never grew
a dimension mark and Old green America never said “feet,”
so we draw plans for 8×10 inch houses. We’ll paint them
miniature white, and pose with one boot on the roof,
and wait for our land to come rolling in;
yet somehow our plans are never finished, a new west wall
always wants to be added, each window wants a confetti bush.
We draw deeper and deeper into the house, the house grows
over with flourishes. Before too long we add people: inside
the people drink miniature water while miniature sunshine
pours through the glass and fractions of seconds tick by.
Inside the people are dots, they eat fictional inches added
to fish, they stumble outside every morning and haul small
reflections up from their wells. All pigs there are in-pig
which is to say pregnant, and their trapdoor spiders fall
through themselves. The wife soothes the cow as it makes
a copy, and skims cream-colored stationery off her milk.
When she wants a flock of chickens, her children all outline
their hands, and a flock of chickens appears. When she wants
to kill one, she sets it loose
and it runs itself to death
on the family piano: it plays high to low and low to high
and then races up and past the keyboard and keeps
playing for a moment in the air—even shapes
of chickens don’t know when they’re dead.
It’s the year of smallest statehood, the people lie down
on the floor to sleep, the states sneak in through any crack
and draw faithfully around them while they dream, draw
North on one and South on the other, and then the states
crawl into their mouths and draw where they will wake up
tomorrow, and stand with one state
in each foot of you,
laughing, and North wakes and sees that South has been bitten,
and she bends down and sucks the green boundary out.
The law says go west, and pick a plot of land, and build
an 8×10 house under shade of my law, and live there,
and the title of the land will stream into your fingers.
The country is still so new, the states must draw themselves
every morning, all real and future and possible states
draw themselves over the land. “This country is infested
with states,” say the settlers, “they crawl on their bellies
through the mud, have learned to look like their surroundings,
eat other states and their own young. They suffer like spiders
from ingrown silk; their backs are marked with one white star.”
We were counterfeiters before and have paper left over,
so we turn all our eyes to the west. The law never grew
a dimension mark and Old green America never said “feet,”
so we draw plans for 8×10 inch houses. We’ll paint them
miniature white, and pose with one boot on the roof,
and wait for our land to come rolling in;
yet somehow our plans are never finished, a new west wall
always wants to be added, each window wants a confetti bush.
We draw deeper and deeper into the house, the house grows
over with flourishes. Before too long we add people: inside
the people drink miniature water while miniature sunshine
pours through the glass and fractions of seconds tick by.
Inside the people are dots, they eat fictional inches added
to fish, they stumble outside every morning and haul small
reflections up from their wells. All pigs there are in-pig
which is to say pregnant, and their trapdoor spiders fall
through themselves. The wife soothes the cow as it makes
a copy, and skims cream-colored stationery off her milk.
When she wants a flock of chickens, her children all outline
their hands, and a flock of chickens appears. When she wants
to kill one, she sets it loose
and it runs itself to death
on the family piano: it plays high to low and low to high
and then races up and past the keyboard and keeps
playing for a moment in the air—even shapes
of chickens don’t know when they’re dead.
It’s the year of smallest statehood, the people lie down
on the floor to sleep, the states sneak in through any crack
and draw faithfully around them while they dream, draw
North on one and South on the other, and then the states
crawl into their mouths and draw where they will wake up
tomorrow, and stand with one state
in each foot of you,
laughing, and North wakes and sees that South has been bitten,
and she bends down and sucks the green boundary out.