from PREDICTIONS AND THREATS

JOHN CAGE IS RUNNING

John Cage is running, running. A hill appears and he climbs it. The sun rises and John Cage runs beneath it. The sun sinks beneath the horizon and melts it. The sky brightens and darkens and darkens to night. John Cage is running, running. Stars appear and flicker and burn. Cars crab past, honking. Benches peer into roads. Bus stops lean into the wind. John Cage passes them all without a second glance. His feet are like fire, stomping flames out as he runs. Pavement like tinder, like shards. John Cage is running. His legs are like logs. His feet push the earth, turning it beneath him. The Earth is flat and his feet pound it into a globe like a blacksmith, feet glowing fire. Stomping it out as he runs. John Cage is running. The last of earth is turning. Stars in the sky are burning. He flicks them out one by one.

EMILY DICKINSON RIDES A STATIONARY BICYCLE

Emily Dickinson rides a stationary bicycle. Petticoats rustle as she rides. Playing cards snap in the wheels like alligators. As she rides the world rushes past her window, and so slowly. Gardens arise and bury themselves into seeds. Great trees spread their leaves but cannot reach. Emily Dickinson’s bloomers rustle as she rides her stationary bicycle. Flowers bloom and potatoes may see. Hummingbirds are flowers’ sex. From South America up through Massachusetts they hover and spit. In her first class cabin Emily Dickinson rides a mechanical camel. It sways up and down, a desert in the depths of the ocean. Antarctica is a desert, the Arctic too. Where there is no rain except ice. A clod breaks off and sinks her. Emily Dickinson is riding a mechanical camel down with the Titanic. Down and down she rides. Anthozoans click and stir and brush her face and their sex is a million million tiny baubles that float to the surface like foam and are devoured.

KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN CARRIES A STADIUM

Karlheinz Stockhausen carries a stadium. It is round and drools marathoners. They fall and splat on the road behind Karlheinz Stockhausen as he stoops. Hot dogs fling from hand to hand and beer splashes in red solo cups. Each splash is the rhythm of the national anthem. They sing as they stand. When they sit Stockhausen schtaggers. Staggers and arises. Karlheinz Stockhausen carries a stadium, and, later, another stadium. He picks them up one by one. Gladiators chew animals and Christians tithe sand. Chariots awaken. Stockhausen in sandals. He can feel wasps digging between his toes. How deep they sink into the sand, he thinks. How heavy these stadiums are. Karlheinz Stockhausen carries a stadium, but only one at a time. Someone will win and someone will lose. Stockhausen takes no notice of their little games and together he raises them up as one.

GENERAL SHERMAN TAKES THE WATER CURE

General Sherman takes the water cure. He drinks the water and sleeps in it. He heats it with his body and is cooled by it. He wraps an ocean around himself and carries it with him wherever he goes. The water is his toilet and his war. General Sherman takes the water cure and is not cured, not this time, so he takes it again, the water cure. He takes it in pills and in red solo cups. His inner ear swims and his coffin is carried away by the waves. General Sherman takes the water cure in a sanitarium somewhere in Europe. There on the slopes of a mountain they wheel him to a ledge overlooking a chasm. At the bottom, a silent stream. Those sparkles might be fish or might not be fish—it’s impossible to tell from where General Sherman sits atop the cliff. He swims in his chair and feels himself sink. Sinks into the mountain, into the water table. Wells are drilled and freshets flow. Dowsers divine for water, waving rods back and forth like hummingbird bills. At the bottom of the mountain, he cannot say for sure whether he is or is not cured, and so General Sherman takes the water cure once more and does not drown, not this time, anyway.

PRESIDENT HARRISON FALLS DOWN THE STAIRS

President Harrison falls down the stairs. No—not that President Harrison. As he falls his beard falls too. America stands and cheers. America gasps as he rolls. From diving boards judges award him scores. President Cleveland stands watching from the top of the stairs and from the bottom. He smooths at his tumor with his tongue. President Harrison falls and monopolies fall. Antitrust suits take the water cure. As he falls his arms flail like swimming. Gas lights make the deep hallway stir as if underwater. Flickering and burning one by one he passes them like stars. President Harrison falls down the stairs. How long this is taking, he thinks. His beard falls with him, more slowly than the rest of him. Floating about him like a shroud, a flag, a bloody shirt. The Gilded Age glides, flickers and scintillates past like gaslight. He tells himself he will be all right. He tells himself he is not in fact falling, simply descending abruptly. He gaslights himself but it’s no use. President Harrison falls down the stairs. President Harrison places a tariff on his fall and refuses to reduce it. President Harrison falls down the stairs and his wife is not there to greet him at the bottom, only his voice, agricultural, beckoning, echoing on into the bounteous future.

BEYONCÉ IN A BATHYSCAPHE

Not a city in Italy, sinks like Venice. Where the oceans are deepest. No fish. No fish—maybe some fish. Maybe some sea cucumbers. The ball turret gunner suspended beneath. Zeppelins ooze. Beyoncé dances in murky deadlight. Deadlights on the Hunley where night seeps in. Concussion and lung froth. Dancing abyssal. How we dance, the distance between persons. Great trenches opening out. Marco Polo in Venice, full of lies. What did you see? What great court? What fountains, what cataracts. Caves filled with ice. The way when brought to the surface deep sea fish expand and explode. How small they are. How much smaller than suspected. Like celebrity. When I met her at the dog park she was regular-sized, like a human. Not Beyoncé—I don’t mean Beyoncé. I mean the well-dressed celebrity in her pressurized pants. Gasoline-tight. And her dog, regular-sized, like a dog. Small creatures of the deep. Enormous Greenland sharks the size of station wagons. Some older than America. Just the sphere the spacecraft. The rest lit with gasoline, liquid fire descending, deadlights capstans in the deep. Captain Picard in his airship. Floating down in his airship. Gasoline or hydrogen, Hindenburg or Akron. Burn like stars. Stars in the dog park. Stars wearing pants like the rest of us wear pants, only better, only tighter, dancing away like Beyoncé. Beyoncé in a bathyscaphe, like Alexander the Great, surveying the realms over which she reigns, supreme, aflame.