Dean Gessie, “eulogy for empire”

Samuel Washington Allen Prize, selected by Charles Coe

South of Gomorrah, the ambulance enters a traffic circle
The wheels squeal the conundrum of opposable thumbs
The Scream by Edvard Munch and not a single moral compass among the tire rims
Paramedics work the code, compress the heart and oxygenate the brain
They are Yahweh and non-binary pronoun
They will not rest after six days
They are cut from the same cloth as those in Amazon Fulfillment Centres
You are the fire and the remnant, wood ash from the year one million
shrunken toothless gene from rotting rootless tubers

that they may know you
the already but not yet

The second time you die, you mount the painted wings and
giant rings of Puff the magic dragon
You see jugglers and stilt walkers, smell cotton candy and corndogs,
press the soft sex between your thighs against vertebrae, ball and socket
grab the reptile’s mane poll to withers, synchronize thrusts to hydraulic pistons
and receive penance in the afterward from the preying hands of dirty old Uncle Rick
he of the neat trick with a dry hydrant and a quick slide tool

so, Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave

At Mercy’s Own, you are jacked four ways on radiation and intracellular poisons
You can’t speak so you prophesy
become a tympanic structure of scream and fart and belch and stomach bubble
an influencer for the piles of menopausal bones that litter 
soiled linen and porcelain thrones
Veins of fool’s gold run the lengths of your arms, quicken like mercury 
into your finger tips and burrow into the earth’s core
Who will prospect and sift your wisdom when nuggets of gold are sold 
with barbecue sauce and a paper crown at Burger King?

says the dragon, beware the spear

Outside, the cicadas sing day and night and day
They are town criers with writs of execution
You imagine the thorax and legs and head
in red coat, white breeches and tricorne hat
The news is not good from Black’s Law
You will live a long life and die ignobly
These bellmen have not come to roll the final stone 
and testify to resurrection
They troll and dox with their cellular sex talk 
and deep fake video of eggs buried in glands and nodes
as much for parable as procreation
You experience their phantom vocal chords 
as piano wire in the blood flats 
of anal fissures and periodontal gums 
but their brief song next to your jingle
has abdominal air and three pairs the legs 
It is they who will finish with long sharp nostrums 
planted in carbon remains

time for the sponge, says the nurse
and you are peeled front and back 
splayed and sprayed and scrubbed 
like old fruit beneath a commercial wash
He runs a comb over a largely bald pate
creates sterile rows of psoriatic scabs 
from a failed regimen of apple cider vinegar
trims nose, brow and ear hair and deftly burps 
the stoma bag sutured to the pink 
flower at colon’s end
Anus, testicles, penis and that abdomen hole 
have become estranged neighbours 
or failing businesses in commercially zoned land
or the four horsemen of faith, obedience, humility and justice 
or suits of cards in a game of diminishing returns

you came into this world with coins on your eyelids
the better to buy passage into blindness and death

And you watch Pat Sajak spin The Wheel 
of Fortune and Vanna White turn 
the letters and you hear the cheers 
of the studio audience and the cheers 
of the slaveholders at NBC and CBS
and you don’t know if these are 
the same wheels and puzzles 
that built the pyramids and dropped 
a deuce of tons on precarious labour
the same wheels and puzzles 
that gutted millions in Aztec temples 
the same wheels and puzzles 
that fitted black folk for fetters 
the same wheels and puzzles 
that felled buffalo and First Nations 
the same wheels and puzzles 
that launched Little Boy and Fat Man
the same wheels and puzzles
that produced numbers and
tattoos for kenneled Jews 
and the same wheels and puzzles 
that champion vulture capitalism and 
Ted Talks and the kind of media penetration
that requires an exit interview and a rape kit
and you don’t know that Pat Sajak 
is a jealous god and that High Priestess 
Vanna White has replaced the Wizard of Oz 
the dress of one the curtain of the other
and that the great reveal is a wicker statue 
that has no meaning in wind and fire
except to provide rest within lines of elegy

your imperfect epistemology 
has been re-tweeted to satellites
in the jet streams of outer space
while prophets in their own
home are without honour and
the dragon remains in its cave
seated on its treasure hoard

asleep

Between fever and stupor, you dream of your all-inclusive
honeymoon in Cozumel, fall down 
the rabbit hole into a skunk pool of Bear Stearns exclusivity
It is unclear who looks in the mirror over your shoulder
your first wife or your boss or a blind man who
uses his white cane to tap out dits and dahs
and it is unclear if he counts out human lives 
lost to climate change or the complete list of all genders 
or the number of times that pundits conflate the debates
and you, your wife, your boss and the blind man share your meals 
with cicadas the length of small forwards in the NBA
share your bed, the hot tub, the swimming pool, the tennis court and 
the massage tables with creatures whose wings 
are cloaks of invisibility from Victoria’s Secret
These exiles from the land of nymphomania have come to score
defend and rebound within four to six weeks of full court press
You can draw only one conclusion from this steam bath
of sex and death shuttered away from the poverty of frijoles
tortilla and coca cola:

LGBTQ is 
the theory of everything
you didn’t see coming

Later, 
another dream coalesces like shuffled image files from vintage snuff video
You add to your maladies Not Invented Here Syndrome
refuse to admit that the horror of it was workshopped beneath the big top
at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and Wounded Knee and My Lai
and Andersonville Prison and Kandahar and Dachau and No Gun Ri and Haditha

oh, come on, 
how many pop-ups 
do I have to kill?

It was so much easier to eliminate pixilated targets 
using light pens and joy sticks in Florida or Virginia
your second wife said so, she a craven animal who
didn’t murder for pleasure or pollute her own shelter
or take a fist in the kisser the better to see and count
fifty neatly rowed stars

she ghosted you after that
she made a ghost of your ass

Now you’re getting your phosphorous and your asbestos mixed up
You burned the flesh of innocents with the first 
and amortized cancer with the second
Is that irony or poetic justice or the sharp edge of Occam’s razor?
Even the guards find work after the war

hark in thine ear: 
change places and
handy-dandy
the hours are the same

Anyway, you were just burning tokens at the arcade
air dropping that nasty shit over Al-Sawad
what your own trade folk called plucking the goose
because it’s all white and it’s all like feathers
This one’s a gut buster:
the way you confuse laissez-fair capitalism 
and munitions that ignite flesh and bone
Phosphorous ordinance scorches the eyes of babies
and pillowcases of goose feather create a perfect snow globe
around the immolated insulators of church, market
and hospital

Allahu Akbar

And who were your
own snow gods?
Your own perfectly held beliefs
in domes of antifreeze?
Did you kneel to General
Custer or Barnum and Bailey
Or Adam Smith or management
of the New England Patriots?

All that remains in your mind’s eye are tropes of poetry:
Rhodesian ammunition chest rig, a pile of beard hair in a sink
helos and mike-mikes, one lone laptop whose screen
saver is a picture of white Jesus and the crystal clear encryption
of WhatsApp, both the platform of choice for launching 
an airstrike and popular caption for image macros:

now I am become Death 
the Destroyer of Worlds

Otherwise sanitized by the publicists at
CNN and FOX as Warner Brothers nanny corporatism 
and the risible cartoon violence of that erasable 
Bugs Bunny:

WhatsApp, doc?

It seems the meals in this place have gone into syndication
The turnip, the beef, the peas and the tapioca 
hit the arrivals board as announced
Says the steward, we’ll move dessert up in the batting order
It matters little to you which of the four bats lead-off or clean-up
They all finish their sentimental journey in the stoma bag 
like the Executive Branch on the tree of good and evil 
or the politics of Walt Disney
Dessert for the dead is not at all like the austerity
you preached on the home front

how can you have any pudding
if you don’t eat your meat?

Gifts given to your daughter were wrapped in current events
and regifted to disadvantaged kids
You achieved respect and hatred in a single kiss

like Judas

Says wife number one,
it’s not all about self-loathing

But you had no alliances, no Color to Go swatches
from the paint store
no pathway to game theory
no parade with the mayor and justices of the peace
You were born well before identity politics 
and you long ago recused yourself 
from the social function of language as
communicable disease
The Joker doesn’t speak for you 
and the Riddler leaves no clues
Your points of anthropological contact 
are Batman fight words in your neatly 
clipped bowel:

swish! swoosh! thunk! and plop!

It would all be so degrading if not for America’s Got Talent
You look into the deep fake faces from Madame Tussauds wax museum
and lift your hospital gown to reveal a bubbling slurry of leaking rotten egg
You play that hole as an Australian didgeridoo or a drone pipe
or the kind of trumpet used to fell the walls of the Fourth Estate
Each contraction of your abdominal muscles produces a burping 
misty note from the Star Spangled Banner
memory of revolution and Rococo macaroni wigs and real time septic sludge 
that dots the stage like the stool of Dali and Mapplethorpe
and the judges immediately stand and straighten with hands over their hearts
and attend the end of the HMS Terror to send you and your stoma 
directly to the Live Show in L.A. and it’s no small coincidence 
that each presses the Golden Buzzer at the very moment 
that Alfred E. Newman presses the starting bell at the New York Stock Exchange
he of what me worry? and painless dentistry married in an instant to Simon Cowell 
and the stink of the cutting room floor

lo, the spear 
will have its day and

tonight, the cicadas are cruel ministers of the black arts
The devil is their consort and you the shining man
They will gore your daughter as they have every day 
for three thousand years, seat you in the ring and 
compel you to witness blood and dream of solstice

was there a measure of pride in her death?
was she not unlike Brad Pitt playing Achilles?
did not the javelin begin its flight as olive wood
on the slopes of Mount Cronion and finish
in the stadium of ancient Olympia?

But the cicadas favour fake news and Facebook algorithms
arrange themselves into fighters, lancers and sword pages
stage bull worship from Mesopotamia and kabuki from Kyoto
stand on hind legs, use wings as tunics, beaks as swords
make hand drums of stomping feet and spear the neck
to lower the head and dampen the knees

the kill shot is that javelin
Sport’s Day on South Field
an egregious impossibly sick joke
you long for cancel culture
and the end to tasteless comedy

By the fourth act, you will die to continue the lie 
or lie in state with methadone, PTSD and whatever 
shiny thing a flock of Jim Crows has pinned
to your uniform

under the golden arches
you said
it’s your choice, honey
book or toy?

The grief is too much and not enough
our ancient brain conspires to make us overeat

The dragon knows better than to sacrifice and pray
he sits on his treasure hoard all the livelong day
he will make no vows and suffer no fools
with his tongue, he eschews mythology 
for the dank crevices between his jewels 

At night, you would go to him
and he would hold your tears in his hands
ojalá
and his body was eucharist and his own tears wine
ojalá
and he would listen to you speak of Yolanda hour after day
ojalá
and his hands made open your ribs and he planted 
there the eggs of your enemies
ojalá
and he drew out the poison with his mouth
ojalá
and his name was Sam and he held you 
through Strauss and Leroux
ojalá
his love as great as Yolanda’s absence
ojalá

You are woken by the exit of one ghost and
the arrival of another
4B has stolen a scene from Airplane! the movie
swallowed a rock of fentanyl
stuck his head in a hangman’s noose
and used a 3D gun to blow brain matter
onto his NRA Golden Eagles card

it takes a vet to euthanize a sick animal
that’s the standing joke, isn’t it?

The other ghost is your own
There you are floating
just below the drop ceiling
i-Phoning video of the death 
of the empire and the death 
of the empire  of the senses
Your body looks like a coat hanger
its sides and vertices an empty vessel
the hooked head a decimal point 
for integer and fractional bones

Still and all, a lone mercenary
works the current and the paddle and 
the script like an avenging Fury

the cicadas sing a coda 
with their tailpieces
the dragon composes 
a cautionary tale
each prepares you for
for the day when 
all the world
will be carbon neutral

The third time you die, you float out and into
the night air to spectate your own parting 

The cicadas will ferry your last minutes with their own 
You and they will have done with sex and 
violence and blather and food and psalm 

strike up the orchestra one last time 
with tymbal organs, wing flicks and clicks
and stridulations

submit remains to the ancient loom
and bid adieu to the dumbshow in the upper and
lower chamber and in the holy see

It is the loudest song sung
in the insect world

Dean Gessie

Dean Gessie is an author and poet who has won dozens of international awards and prizes. Among other honors, Dean was included in The 64 Best Poets of 2018 and 2019 by Black Mountain Press in North Carolina. He also won the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award in England, the Allingham Arts Festival Poetry Competition in Ireland and the Creators of Justice Literary Award [Fiction Category] from the International Human Rights Art Festival in New York. Elsewhere, Dean won the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize in Massachusetts, the Enizagam Poetry Contest in California, the Ageless Authors Poetry Contest in Texas, the Indigo Open Poetry Prize in England, the Spoon River Review Editors’ Prize in Illinois, the Southern Shakespeare Company Sonnet Contest in Florida, the COP26 Poetry Competition in Scotland and the UN-aligned Poetry Contest in Finland [in honour of the U.N. Climate Change Conference]. Dean’s short story collection – called Anthropocene – won an Eyelands Book Award in Greece and the Uncollected Press Prize in Maryland. He has a book of poetry forthcoming [goat song] from Uncollected Press.