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“Indivisible” by James Tate 🇺🇸 (8 Dec 19438 Jul 2015)
Some genetic prodding in the termite’s nest, accomplished by servants with arrows, led to some dodgy sandwiches in the petshop. I was yelping with a pitchfork at some gummy weathervane. Predatory delicacies were sifting through the cradle. I assigned myself the task of pasting up itineraries for the victims. Once in a motel I put some electrodes on a chimp, I’m sorry about that. I turned newts into astronauts, that was a mistake. Maybe my cousin is a dolphin, I don’t know. There are networks of cells that form sponges on which this galaxy exists. Their urgent criteria woven into the buffeting, if feeble, sensory geometry of woebegone trains, immolating distinct convenience. It’s the maintenance of hierarchies that breaks our backs. I find peace in lava, in plums, in kernels with exact instructions. I am hushed when it comes to an arsenal of viscera, I am piqued when the soggy grasp at me in tubs. I provide, casually; incidentally, I partake. I have sampled some devotions, I have envisioned being perpetually hitched. I have set myself on fire with kerosene. And now I walk among my town’s folk, immune, beseeching.