by Blake Butler
I found I could not speak surrounded in us. I could not think or feel or hear anything among the unending shrieking veils of sand. But I was in here, pressed against anything we’d witnessed. So many days had passed this way, where what had happened to me had happened to you too and seemed to happen regardless of whether we did the things we believed we did or not. And yet still as I felt each perspective passing through me, I knew it was the last, as where it touched me every cell burst into nameless burning.
God began again inside the burning as I watched. For each of the unbelieving bodies splayed up rotting in persistence, he made a mark upon his flesh. The first mark bore the shape of a circle, an unbreaking pact made with itself; the band of the clasp of the circle walked forever in the furrows of sand that would become the bodies of our bodies in the years before the years; from the sand the sound would form dimensionless, to be demented in man’s image, and so from the symbol of the circle every other symbol fell. There were the urges and the bees who stung the urges in us. There were the numbers and acolytes of hope and certain gestures grafted into the limbs of us by fright. There was nothing to fear so we feared the nothing. The heat of the breath of god formed the spaces among the fibers for the sicknesses to dwell in. Each time the day began again, a new great sickness. The dreams placed in our teeth supplied a yearning for communication and definition crowded in among what must have been our eyes. Around the eyes arose the lungs, nose, nostrils, cheeks, aorta, gonads, urethral lips, large intestines, small intestines, thumbs, as well as the anatomies forever cursed by lightning where black refracted in the corridors of the house of god’s black mind, begetting spleen, gallbladder, ureter, lung, pancreas, rectum, each of which would teach itself to swim wide in the chosen moments while the body lay upon its back. Having been given flesh, then, the urges returned and overtook us and filled us with their speech; inside our shapes was placed a strobing that bore the mark of the endless death soon to be made witness unto us as soon as we realized we’d appeared here in the world at once always both alone and not alone, so that we’d never shake the wish both to be and kill our own creator.
Out of the burning, land is born. The land is vivisected, given new names, which all are the same name again, with many different ways to say it. Weather stirs the dirt and water into lather that dictates certain corridors the way that air alone once had been meant to. Between the corridors we make our homes, confining light in ways among which we can sleep. Each motion takes us further on toward its own ending.
There is that which cannot be seen. Houses in the name of god are built with colored glass and high ceilings and the long pews and the cash plates and the casks of water and the blood and the body and the pipe organ and the restrooms and the books. Here a language will be spoken, the word after the word. With one’s head against the wood in the right condition with the head aimed and open to the sun and charcoal underneath the building and the correct cluster of buttons pressed hard inside the head and a draft of cold air for several sleepings and hours under water, one might hear the words as they all are: the name repeated, the name repeated.
Every name is given a new name. It does not matter what the name is. In the reiteration of each whichever, we hear the damage rendered as new words. We hear the echo of the bodies of the prior iteration of the hour in the rising acts of evisceration, iteration. We hear us lying on our backs in the cornfields under a white sky being cannibalized outside the black house of the scene of the crime inside this book which must only go on forever in its own presence in its instance of the past and yet also so again and so must become silence must become and through which we go on. We wear the void plain on our face all waking hours already knowing, and so clothing, makeup, colors, mirrors, walls.
Death feeds itself already with our phantoms, the daily killings we have yet to take form to commit. Early infanticides and hyperventilating sermon are pummeled out with stone on stone between the making where in the last hours the dying president had stood and sworn in tongues in the thronelight already burning mirrored above and below our chorus and what else. And where god stood strobing before a marked door in a machine and farted through the word of words snatched from the mass of confetti blood pouring eternally in the pilgrimages where our death Worship made and sold our organs into slavery for the Nth time and gnashed us bit from bit along the ridged backbone neoning beneath the trammeled cistern pouring blood back into the blood all black inside every father of the child aping cold prayer service behind the steering wheels of cars and in the hair of horses and in the teeth of pets and in the eye of the coin stamped with the false image of our eye.
The cities box themselves in wallwise, already folded with the magma still in swill beneath where here we were again with he among us and he within us. Each new ending wrote itself over the last, always beginning already again before it could, the copies clogging up like water gnashing around a hole in the floor of the ocean beneath the putty mirror marker disrupting boats and knocking white planes out of blue skies downward to crest into the mapmash of this blood foam lubing up the face of the ocean to mirror the mirror again back at itself squealing the death jokes on a gray stage underneath yellow headlamps in green boxes in the pink belly of the worship we wrapped around each old gold city shit upon from birds white as the eye purple as the eye brown as the eye clear as the eye inside the eye, and where in vast collaboration more cogs catch and flip and shiver bronzed between each other turning milk out of the retch, caught in flesh flasks unto the body of god already whored into a dome, god on god now rising fast and fresh around America in snaking portraits called museums called beautiful evenings called new food, its whipping weight peeling high along the unseen ceiling so bunched double that the future too is pulled, drafted like icons obscuring even the wish of television in our heart, gnarling the dream seed even as it rises and shapes in pleasure caked in objects like a rash, whirring hot to open sores so tiny they could not be sniffed by the promise of our children having children. And so the coming comes again bearing the deadliest birthmark underneath prismatic post-god scrim, while yes, thank god we scream saying the name again the wrong way, thank god, there is a new day, here I am.
The years go on in sevens. Each of the years is its own veil, surrounded by each person’s private birthplace in all minds. The names of the colonies and states seem imbued with past days each in their own way, fat full of exit language that on our lips all make the same shape. We worship light in Smexas, New Xork, Cruxisim. We worship in harbors, getting haircuts, growing fat. These are the names of god not god. Our history is overrun already with commercial demand, and demand for demand, which means we put the butter in the freezer and the ice cream in the cupboard, believing this is correct, and never knowing any different. We turn on the water in the sink at the faucet to watch it run and are surprised when it is cold and we try to answer the phone but it keeps ringing though we are speaking into the mouthpiece saying hello hello hello hello hello and the words do not exist and then we shit our pants again and cannot feel it and the history goes on.
You already know about the wars. You know about the lengths of leg and laughter that rolls from the holes we had been given and woke again in new shapes each day to wrap around the air between the pillars of the house that squeezes itself in pockets of our fat. Each house is the same house and knows all colors secreted together into mirrors. The singing is not songs, but a certain form of itching that crawls along our spines and jellies and makes along the sky appear the moons, the eyes of long dead light arriving. Each instant holds more work than any one cell could hold through any other instant. In this way we repeat even our present moments. We build the boxes and the homes again and again as has been told, while waiting through any instant for any ending. No one word or face or image can hold the center, and so without center, we reflect. This happens every instant every hour. Where we walk is where our killer awaits us. It feels good to be wanted. We watch the killer writhe inside his wishing to kill and kill and kill again,
the singing taking shape inside the killer’s body as thunder, sunshine, writing, by which we learn to plan our days. This is our history, we imagine, language buried in a song no one is hearing. Each sentence thought or spoken indicates the coming birth and death of thousands.
We count upon our hands the gold. We elect bodies to edict above our bodies. Numbers become counted, tallied, praised. Days each day feel the same with slightly different skin. We remember the story of the birth of Christ, of erosion, of the barbarism of the land, relayed by people repeating words inside words; the words change shape each year. It’s impossible at all to remember any of it more than in short life shifts, as we’ve been slaughtered, sautéed, saladed again, so continuously it feels like progress.
There is a catalog of vast delight. We’ve been murdered, but we’re inventing! We make more locks to fit with keys, taking photographs to deform the light with what we might remind ourselves we know, and what we looked like then, and who stood by us, and anything at all. It’s not a dream we’re dreaming; it is us.
We invent swim fins. We invent the octant and the stove. We invent mail order, the lightning rod, the catheter; we invent the swivel chair, the flatboat, bifocals, the automatic flour mill. We have held these things before. They take shape around our bodies. We invent the cracker, the cotton gin, the wheel cipher, the fireplace, the suspension bridge, the hydrant, the amphibious vehicle, refrigeration, percolation, the lobster trap, the circular saw. These are American creations. It’s another new beginning. We are Americans again, filling ourselves again into where we were or are again or will be or want to or want to want to or will or were. We invent dental floss, the milling machine, the lathe, the detachable collar, the graham cracker, the platform scale, the electric doorbell, the machine reaper, Morse code, the sewing machine, the threshing machine, the combine harvester, the steam shovel, the wrench, the solar compass, the circuit breaker and the relay there between. Each day is less a day of ours. Each day is a day. We invent the self-polishing steel plow, the corn shelter, the sleeping car, vulcanized rubber, anesthesia, the grain elevator, the ice cream maker, the evaporator, the printing press, the tape primer, the baseball, holding on tight to our eyes; the printing telegraph, the doughnut, the safety pin, the gas mask, the inverted microscope; Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick; the fire alarm, the elevator brake, potato chips, the clothespin, the breast pump, condensed milk, we will relearn to feed our child; toilet paper, pepper shaker, monkey wrench, and mason jar; ironing board, twine knotter, burglar alarm; escalator, vacuum cleaner, repeating rifle, the twist drill; postcard, pin tumbler lock, machine gun, the enclosing surface of the home; Henry Howard Holmes kills at least twenty-seven bodies; breakfast cereal, ratchet wrench, roller skates, spar torpedo, cowboy hat, urinal, chuckwagon, motorcycle, paper clip; barbed wire, ticker tape, water-tube boiler, refrigerator car, paper bag, tape measure, vibrator, American football, the pipe wrench, the clothes hanger, the can opener, sandblasting, the mixer, the diner, the railway air brake, jeans, the knuckle coupler, earmuffs, the fire sprinkler, ice cream soda, the quadruplex telegraph, QWERTY keyboards, the dental drill, the mimeograph, the synthesizer, the airbrush, the tattoo machine, the phonograph, district heating, the carbon microphone, the free jet water turbine, the bolometer, the cash register, the oil burner, candlepin bowling, the electric chair, the electric dead; the metal detector, the electric iron, Christmas lights, the electric fan, the solar cell, the thermostat, the dissolvable pill; do you want me to keep going, do you love me, are you inside me, are you mine; you must keep up; we invent the lap steel guitar, the popcorn machine, photographic film, the skyscraper, fuel dispenser, dishwasher, filing cabinet, telephone directory, slot machine, softball, gramophone, comptometer, AC motor, kinetoscope, trolley pole, drinking straw, stepping switch, revolving door, payphone, the stop sign, the tabulating machine, the smoke detector, the jackhammer, the Ferris wheel, the Tesla coil, the zipper, the bottle cap, the dimmer, the tractor, laxative, radio, mousetrap, volleyball, comic strip, cotton candy, muffler, charcoal briquette, remote control, semiautomatic shotgun, hairbrush, filing cabinet, flashlamp, and the century ends, this ends the century, the next century begins, this begins the century; we invent the thumbtack key punch assembly line Jane Toppan kills at least thirty-one safety razor radio direction finder hearing aid postage meter teddy bear periscope air-conditioning tea bag offset printing press airplane windshield wipers baler automatic transmission AC power plugs batting helmet architectural acoustics fly swatter ice pop paper towel electric washing machine electric mixer Skee-Ball paper shredder suppressor gin rummy headset binder clip automobile self-starter road surface marking autopilot fast food restaurant electric blanket electric traffic light traffic cone fortune cookie skeet shooting supermarket cloverleaf exchange where the fuck are the bodies tow truck condenser microphone the bodies the bodies the toggle light switch the killer’s arm stream cipher superheterodyne receiver hydraulic brake blender pneumoencephalography silica gel pop-up toaster Albert Fish kills at least five and maybe more than one hundred jungle gym garage door flowchart bodies adhesive bandage bodies water skiing radial arm saw bulldozer bodies masking tape Reuben sandwich Gertrude Stein publishes The Making of Americans Tilt-A-Whirl killer cotton swab America fucked in America instant camera gas chamber execution Moviola garage door opener power steering drive-thru liquid-fuel rocket bread slicer jukebox garbage disposal where are the bodies negative feedback amplifier recliner ice cube tray this is America bubble gum this is a list of holy wars wars inside the bodies for the bodies in the name of the name of names electric razor iron lung air traffic control Freon tampon applicator flight simulator sunglasses frozen food particle accelerator car audio Carl Panzram kills at least twenty-one and sodomizes at least a thousand runway lighting the bathysphere chocolate chip cookie electric guitar strobe light golf cart we have not yet learned quite how to kill radio telescope tape dispenser drive-in theater impact sprinkler trampoline Richter scale franchising black light parking meter surfboard fin pH EEG topography stock car racing programming language the bodies in the head the chairlift bass guitar photosensitive glass digital computer shopping cart blood bank cyclamate beach ball fiberglass xerography nylon Teflon soft-serve yield sign VU vocoder deodorant acrylic fiber corn dog napalm killkillkill microwave oven cruise control chemotherapy William Heirens kills at least three bodies DEET diaper proton therapy cloud seeding transistor Ed Gein kills at least fifteen women defibrillator acrylic paint supersonic aircraft hair spray windsurfing cat litter video games cable TV flying disk carbon dating airsickness bag atomic clock crash test dummy artificial snow credit cards leaf blower cooler wetsuit correction fluid airbag polio vaccine barcode artificial heart Apgar Wiffle ball TV dinner automatic door synthetic diamond radar gun nuclear submarine William Gaddis publishes The Recognitions hard disk OS wireless microphone laser sugar packet bubble packing carbon fiber integrated circuit fusor weather satellite spandex artificial turf magnetic stripe card global navigation the pill spreadsheet wearable computer biofeedback light-emitting diode jet injector glucose meter computer mouse lung transplantation BASIC neutron bomb plasma display Moog eight-track heart transplantation LCD SQUID snowboarding Kevlar hypertext cordless phone Richard Ramirez kills at least fourteen space pen minicomputer CD internal-frame backpack food bank handheld calculator racquetball virtual reality bone marrow transplantation lunar module laser printer Charles Manson kills no one with his own hands inside the family mind of minds Taser mousepad markup language LAN PC microprocessor floppy disk email C video game console John Wayne Gacy kills more than twenty-four bodies and buries them inside his home oh here are the bodies there will be more bodies more bodies ended more bodies made Randy Steven Kraft kills at least sixteen bodies and maybe more than sixty Thomas Pynchon publishes Gravity’s Rainbow personal watercraft recombinant DNA catalytic converter mobile phone Ted Bundy kills more than forty bodies voice mail Dean Corll kills more than twenty-seven boys Heimlich maneuver Post-it UPC David Berkowitz kills
six bodies wounding seven digital camera Ethernet breakaway rim Hepatitis B vaccine Gore-Tex MRI BBS Carlton Gary kills at least seven women Joseph Paul Franklin kills at least eleven Jim Jones kills nine hundred and seventeen bodies with his mind Coral Eugene Watts kills between eighty and one hundred women winglets polar fleece control-alt-delete fetal surgery space shuttle paintball GUI internet laser blind signature Gary Ridgway kills at least seventy-one women laser turntable Henry Lee Lucas kills at least eleven and as many as six hundred Cormac McCarthy publishes Blood Meridian atomic force microscope stereolithography DMD Perl Richard Angelo kills at least twenty-five bodies Eddie Leonski kills at least five nicotine patch firewall ZIP file format magnetic lock sulfur lamp Bret Easton Ellis publishes American Psycho Jeffrey Dahmer kills at least fifteen people and consumes their bodies Aileen Wuornos kills at least seven men GPS scroll wheel JavaScript low plasticity burnishing bait car David Foster Wallace publishes Infinite Jest Francisco del Junco kills at least four women Ronald Dominique kills at least twenty-three men Mars rover DVR virtual globe phase-change incubator Dr. Harold Shipman kills at least fifteen Segway artificial liver SERF Tommy Lynn Sells kills at least twelve and as many as seventy-one HPV vaccine 3-D model rendering shingles vaccine trongs Dennis Rader kills at least ten women nanowire battery bionic contact lens composite aircraft whoever what Gretch Gravey kills three hundred million all in all.