[The Chapter of the Ant]

1.

Points are not cubes
In cubes points see points

You are not lemon slivers, bouquets of embers
You are all properties of flint and citrus


           Today I, 1., struggle to understand an economy
           based on the manufacture of oyster-shell buttons and my dumb
           decision while, 2., Rafael practices the pronunciation of bs in unbearable.
           No one in this car recalls the second verse
           of Penny Lane, or how to use the quadratic equation.

           Imagine our oblations.


2.

What is flux
What is fixed…

You are not electricity. You are not ejaculate. You are not the righteous martyrs. You are not the sumac’s blush. You are not the sound of invader’s hooves or hooves. You are not the left arm strapped down / the left arm made moribund. You are not the cupped palm of a valley, a desert valley, nor are you its sweep of sand. You are not sleepers’ rising from sheets. You are not a down payment. You are not a mutating virus, neither are you penicillin. You are not the sheen off a grackle’s egg / the iridescence of anemones. You are not night. You are not the congress of those who were strangers. You are not a squatter’s camp. You are not the rhymes of double-dutch and sport. You are not a civilization. You are not a canoe weaving among wild rice. You are not maggots cleaning wounds and you are not these crimson wounds. You are not the mosaic prints of gum on streets neither are you the fugue of streets, nor their swimming. You are not negation. You are not the look of human eyes on trains, on trains, on trains. You are this going and this arriving, you are this we wish to keep. You are love. N-cube cubed. You are night.