Since in truth people are not cylinders nor the other way ‘round we ought not to pretend it our veins are blue; full of blood – our veins don’t take in even scant fuel tanks & it’s scandalous for the polyps to suggest it Electricity doesn’t: animate limbs Frankenstein’s creation: was monstrous & didn’t require a bride to wed it Beautiful skin is not like porcelain – nor like alabaster – it’s like skin it’s meant to be like skin Geography Lesson Let’s join this field trip to Kosmodrom Baykonur A launch center in southern Kazakhstan’s desert steppe where the winds can comfort or distress depending on their pathways Perhaps the name Kosmodrom Baykonur was selected to deceive the Western Bloc by telegraphing its location 320 kilometers northeast (to a mining town of that name) of its true location but the cresentoid-shaped spaceport near Leninsk isn’t lost. It’s east of the Aral Sea, north of the Syr Darya River surrounded by plains which please the radio signals and their démodé preferences for uninterrupted spaces near the equator which endows greater velocity into the ICBMs to-be-launched from the waist of the spinning-earth where Afanasiy Ilich Tobonov found paths of mass wildlife deaths exactly drawn on the flight paths of wind-borne rockets Deer had been incinerated and the people of Eliptyan became cancerous from the rocket fuel. So did Tobonov. Those deaths and their causes: another series of lost things – but the spilled rocket fuel wasn’t lost; it blew its way into arteries and bones And as our field trip scuttles back to school we’ll pass fields of spent launch equipment which the local population salvages thereby spilling rocket fuel where it doesn’t belong Kosmos-21 She whom Americans call ‘Cosmos 21’ ascended heavenward from Kosmodrom Baykonur on (the American’s) Veteran’s Day in 1961 and while the name Космодро́м Байкону́р may have been selected for deception purposes Kosmos 21 wasn’t concerned with secrecy. She was concerned with staying aloft as she careened around Earth gathering momentum, but her orbit decayed slightly, then more noticeably. Three days later she flatlined. We’re not even sure whether she was meant to attempt a Venus flyby or not. She’d been as shrouded in Soviet secrecy as her launch site and by now perhaps they’ve forgotten her altogether. Maybe she was intended from the beginning to remain in a geocentric orbit – a ‘parking orbit’ – which makes it sound pedestrian – but a polished metal handiwork carried by her own velocity and spinning through space tethered only by the gravity of us (the mass of us) is far from pedestrian – a tether ready to snap She stalled, lessening, then punctured the atmosphere, and came back hot Slim Buttes Sonnet (1876) We, when Crazy Horse had vanished away chased him. September. Then came stagnation which clenched us and held. Until – starvation “Men eating their mules,” newspapers portrayed Entered crooked buttes after the sun’s banked Viewed campfires which glowed against shallow clouds “Let’s crawl towards the tipis, wrapped up in shrouds Squint, mutter softly, count warriors encamped” Mills, hours later (night greyed towards a dawning) Split our men into fourths; stealth was required to best hidden foes encircled by spires Village of families, doors facing east Closed, snug, dreaming, awoke to sulfur thick American Horse shot in the stomach Estate Planning
Her property emulsified behind her very eyes with the realization that her wiccan spell royalties might be trickier to devise than she’d originally anticipated Non-probate avenues to consider; Angles to take stock of; The right wording of the thing Should the gift be conditioned – Will the devisee accept it some time after the donor is cremated – Ought she to die intestate – Will other expectancies be roiled / calamitous soiled / cantankerous? What of lapse; of loved ones who refused to die in the correct sequence? How about abatement; of creditors consuming legacies as if they were candy corn? problematic-postmortem-presents, these The ink on the testatrix’s papers ‘twas still wet when she realized her mistake
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