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Quorum Franking the mail is the principal doomsday device for making contagion from hay, like clockwork delivered by DNA, propped up in the pigeonhole every target is known to pass by and inspect with morbid regularity. But relax: when it doesn’t have your name on it, you don’t die from it—— in that event, the man-sized rat trap, with a touch of HG Wells about it, will spring that other foreign-looking guy the surprise that only recent arrivals can be surprised by i.e. everything they can no longer take for granted, which is now pretty much everything. Too late, they learn it’s too late to learn English after your dog’s gone off its Chump. (No, I don’t follow you.) Wait. There is nothing here to suggest that the bowels of chaos expel structure, or that the airtight universe that passes through us will leave a residue of fairy dust to powder over our next life, or that can-openers are more useful than sparrows farting at sunrise, or that gratitude will accompany our noses stubbing at speed into what appears to be the extrinsic nature of this life: your very personal litany of replete condoms does not undo this. Fact. But when you do get your discharge papers——yours——and feel pressed by the (is that—?) eagerness of your family members to watch you spring them open, watch: instantly the clock starts running backwards, your child becomes a sunset, or more accurately the adolescent hope of a shared sunset one day. Snap. Immediately, doesn't that set you wondering who you’re going to spend eternity with? Or how crowded it is in there and, critically, whether you will float. |
This Poem was Critiqued By: Joanne M Uppendahl On Date: 2005-12-01 14:15:54
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.96296
Dear Mark:
Title: Quorum
“Franking” is a word I had not encountered before, but learned it
means the marking of the mail as ‘postage paid’ and therefore it,
with many other references, alerts me to the theme of this poem,
along the lines of ‘your time’s up, what’re you gonna do about it?’
“the mail is the principal doomsday device
for making contagion from hay, like clockwork
delivered by DNA”
I’ll admit to being a bit lost here. I get the reference to DNA being
a sort of incendiary device, with codes for deadly diseases locked
within. But as you reassure us, “when it doesn’t have your name on
it, you don’t die from it.” It takes a combination of factors to trigger
the DNA ‘doomsday device’ – many of which remain unknown to
us.
Then, I believe you are referencing a coffin, the “man-sized rat trap”
or perhaps it could be a car? In any event, it seems to be the conveyance
in which one arrives (“recent arrivals can be surprised”) in the land of
death, perhaps the Bardo of Mahayana Buddhism, the intermediate state
between lives, when the mind experiences a series of hallucinations
ending in its next birth.
I’m still lost in this poem, but very intrigued:
“Too late, they learn it’s too late to learn English
after your dog’s gone off its Chump. (No, I don’t
follow you.) Wait.” Right, Mark, I don’t follow
you. I am wandering around in this strange place,
aptly named by you, “the bowels of chaos.”
“There is nothing” – An existentialist POV, as it sits alone on the line?
“sparrows farting at sunrise” – Ah, the nature lover! Auditory imagery!
This makes me laugh, as each morning I walk under tree limbs containing
not sparrows, but large Canadian geese and mallard ducks. Their sound
could be imagined as deafening, rather than the dainty little squeaks of
sparrows.
“But when you
do get your discharge papers——yours——and feel pressed
by the (is that—?) eagerness of your family members to watch
you spring them open”
Humor helps here, as everywhere else in life. There is that
eagerness, unacknowledged, for the final gasps to be complete.
You make it seem very personal by the emphasis on “yours.”
It’s always easier to imagine someone else’s, those being the
only deaths that anyone reading has actually experienced so
far.
You show how time instantly distorts. This makes sense to me
as in my lifetime I have experienced events which changed the
feel of time. It is reasonable to imagine that entering death does
so more markedly.
“watch: instantly the clock starts
running backwards, your child becomes a sunset, or more
accurately the adolescent hope of a shared sunset
one day. Snap.” (The silver chord snapped asunder?)
“Immediately, doesn't that set you wondering
who you’re going to spend eternity with? Or how crowded
it is in there and, critically, whether you will float.”
The poem does set me to wondering. About how we will sense
one another after the “snap” has occurred, and whether we will
have freedom to wander about, and what it will feel like and
where will we hang our ‘identities’ – will it be like going through
the security checkpoint at an airport, when we are divested of
those things which normally identify us as individuals? Wondering
whether one will float brings up the obverse idea of ‘sinking’ and
where would one sink? To?
I enjoyed this poem and have gone on far too long making nonsense
of my response to it. I hope I have caught some of your ideas.
Thanks for the chance to ponder these things! I've enjoyed myself.
My best,
Joanne