auto-epistle
I
dressed in gossamer,
(never spun yourself)...
svelte and expansive
(all at the same time)...
existing in trinity of saturated persona
yet,
refracting thru stagnant mirror
water
only parting to placata our thrashing
phantom limb...
calculating in letter
to see the carcass lessened
by the mind
attempting
to swallow ethos like antidote & assimilate into some streamlined factory
facility in the deep North...
Dear, dear other-self
just
once get your ass out the water and swim like me
i beg you, my nigga
tune in, bc im comin thru
the static...
you may think me an enemy but
we steady on the one
we drumming wrongly on the one
we growling in some belly on
the one we floating into purgatory, breech on the one we dipping our two in the
drinking gorge on the one we drowning on the one
and we lash back on the one
for the one.
Backlog
// Litany
[transmutation
of To Graham Foust on the Morning of His
Fortieth Birthday]
Subterrains exist in Harlem.
Pero like… the antebellum oddities
(dusk dressed in dunnage)
is the hill still made of
sugar?
Ain’t no traveling back to glass houses –
the swelter musta fucked around and
turned them back to sand.
Congesting every cavity with carbohydrates,
you remember, fondly,
the treasure you once made of trash.
In anotha artless, representational nightmare
–
we all know you made up – all the images are [secretly] inverted woodcuts.
Wilderness thick
with wenge falling a
whisper, every accidental click of my
tongue, a
memory.
Trauma ticks its own time.
Hyacinths eventually fade into
fists-fulla-finger.
Irreparable damage is, in essence, a
chemical change. Like
isn’t
genetics the long-game of every culture but ours?
Anyway, what’s the dictionary definition of silence?
In the etymology of my invention,
Cambium
implies vast and vascular
change.
The obsolete function of my
everlasting tuck.
Swan song after swan song
after…
I
guess there’s an oscillating overstimulation in observing your object from over
here,
the
same old overstimulation exists in old growth. There is no happiness like being
the fat kid and loving it. Nothing as delightfully bitter as sitting with
yourself. Yourself.
Yourself.
A reluctant rapping.
3 sister squeezes and I am reminded
of a kiss on the battlefield.
Recall the rough and routine of your
rifle?
The sabertooth of your
sythe?
And
what’s more mestizo than a Black body’s delight with the odor of dried tobacco?
Finally, you can spew the sermon –
“Dear
God: How many bent knees will it take for you to get off?
”
Slow sunrises stumble over another swing, you wake up on your stomach again.
Every scar a callous.
Neutral
subjects are white well-meaning & washing my colors in bleach.
On
the cusp // that fixture between maybe and
you wish – mmmm – the shanty sung
really depends on outlook.
Said
shanty is to be sung by a Viking with locked hair, or a high-yellow bed-wench
that saunters around
Massa’s
house during peak-picking-time just to end up breastfeeding two white-babies
at-once.
Dreams dim, a dank puddle of bong water...
Yeah I admit, suicide was just a face card
to be played as a lesson
straight flush
straight face
cigar plume aerating an aureole around me and me
alone.
I lied about sleepwalking;
and drinking straight from the carton;
and
allegedly being alarmed by an amber-tinted photo of my missing self
– an imaginary dream – invented out of
necessity like
stroking
my chest incessantly or plugging my ears like the sockets they most certainly
are.
Oh that’s what
you mean by extra?
This
fidgets?
Nine
snakes molded from drama entrance you, you lie before blue light to emit a
whiff of yourself.
Soon
the sky will spread far enough to touch you but it will feel a swarm.
Anyways,
who else could hold dominion over Sunday?
Nothing
rouses my bulge like the taxederm senator adorning my foyer.
Don’t we all gotta
attic fulla musty marble
austerity measures
that mirage of 40 acres?
[vibrato buzz of a microwave;
come in, shellshock.
Come in, alphabet soup
entity.]
Follow me —
follow and find folly in stepping on the cracks
as if your mother’s spine is
umbilical.
And look at that —
some solstice in Savannah:
a pair of capsizing river boats buoy in a bog why?
Since dividing every 60 minutes into
15
digestible
4-minute
segments
I have made sure I never experience a second.
Humping my own body-shaped sweat-mark;
orange used to be the color of envy.
The Earth has become flat with doom,
but
your cooing, dove? — flighty with
love for me, and me, alone? —
still
hums in the heads of transmission tower men, chainganged with telephone wire.
Who
is you is me: in that I revel.
You
will never hear my falsetto fade – but you will know I am gone.
Already wrote the last song I will ever sing.
Whether you slap your knees or not,
cry real tears or not —
I’m laughing so..
Who among our duet dances to dilate,
expanding
into marrow, the breeding ground of blood. Shall I extract your left lung?
If
a wailing serves as a song, kinda like a secret serves as a treasure, then what
— treasure or no treasure — can we call the Primal Scream?
When
all is said and done, you are both rod and cone now allow us to microscope
mirrored cat eyes flickering from fenders.
O! Poor Patriot predisposition
still fussing over our individual right to
keep the gate...
Singing, both
my country tears of thee
(steal away)
sweet land of liberty (steal
away)
of thee I see (steal away)
land where my fathers died
(steal away to Jesus)
land of the pilgrims pride
(steal away)
from every mountainside
(steal away home)
let freedom ring! (I haven’t
got long to stay here.)
[beat]
venturecapitalistverse // pygmypoems
Offensive turns of phrase I made up.
I masticated. Vomited
every delicious morsel into the mouth of a baby
falcon blue with
breathing.
Handful of leftover mandible.
What did you end up reading in my braille?
All the while I found you, a single, stray whisker.
Finding place cautiously, you locate the perfect
odor and imprint
to recoil in.
I know I remember wrong
November and that Great Impregnating Gust
In LA, every turn of Earth is an indifferent spoke.
Refrain from beating the horse again again.
Refrain from turning the horse to beef.
Refrain from raping my syllabary, for once make love
to my letter.
Refrain from the game of spinal tap.
Refrain from contorted courtesy –
chivalry a sliver of shiv in/to the womb.
Classic. Going backwards to attach alliteration,
a-little-lattice.
Unmatched the tawing of my hide in your sun.
My cell your microwave
the wanton nuking of another city that used to be
wartorn.
Where is that ever-flowing fountain?
That place with no viscosity where
the pennies never do anything but float and the
wishes are washed up. Some call it Washington Heights.
Gimme a second, damn —
You act like time ain’t a poppet.
& God’s breath smelled somethin’ sacrilegious
today as he spoonfed me a saccharine shallot.
Refusal to brush teeth before bed
the charcoal stain of my sink reminds me of
childhood stardom – in other words–
another nova gleams in my enamel
come morning.
Somehow you found yourself somewhere
in the sepia-tinted whiteness of TV Land generations passed & you’ve
been meaning to drive-by the Brady Bunch house.
I called your disconnected number for four more
years after you ripped yourself from the phonebook.
Will Time ever put back on his uniform and fight?
like...
is you a nigga or is you a bitch? boypussy electric in tension. like...
I’d let him fuck if he wasn’t so busy asking for receipts. bill-collector // boner-killer
mostly hard – as hard as we can be – when comparing
growth in centimeters as if a bird’s eye view of the body is the right choice.
Notecard deck of microexpressions to feign feeling.
I don’t need those anymore.
The peacock theatrics of my father, anything but
creative. If anything.
Coming a carpenter
carving off-center concentrics out of splintery
naps.
Cellar full of slag, mechanical bagpipe pistons
ringing alarm.
auto-epistle II
“Aint you colored? as in,
outside the borders of the
unsaturated mirage
we call
purity or
natural order or
attractive composition?
though you may only recognize your own burn
in locales subsumed by the blinding white shadow
i am it.
[beat]
and of course
you recall my formlessness?
with its decadent array of derivatives
punctuating the pregnant pauses
of each transmuted phrase?
and I’m sure
you have appreciated my cunning?
with its distilled repertoire of
mutation, amending your ability
to hold hostage those very same pauses?
poor boy,
thuggish in unwanted tint,
what will become of you
without me?”
Zeno Scott is Trans Wordsmith & Woodworker based in Los Angeles, by way of Harlem. Zeno is currently a first-year MFA student at CalArts, studying Creative Writing and Performance in the Critical Studies school.
As an Afro-Latinx language enthusiast who has lost his Spanish tongue, Zeno’s recent work focuses on monolingual translation; highlighting the power of language to mutate, like queerness can, depending on the speaker and eventually, the reader. Zeno's work attempts to simultaneously pay homage and lovingly critique the work that inspires and moves him.
This submission is a long transmutation of Graham Fousts’
auto-epistle To Graham Foust on the Morning of His Fortieth Birthday. Also
attached, before and after the transmutation, are two auto-epistles from Zeno's
first collection, wetlocked mat of heritage [i call a scalp].