American Sestina
Why not just say what the street says? Or the jungle? Why not be
not afraid instead of weaving designs into fabric until you
come to believe only in the design? Why not just make a few simple shapes?
Icons, maybe? Or add text about how good it is to be lost, how flexible
we have to be to get through each day, how the fish for dinner would
really like to be in the Gulf of Mexico? As though words were sins...
By opening a window, against whom do we trespass? By pointing out the
ribbed texture of dung beetles? By remembering the grapefruits we ate
south of the border? By being fluid enough to have multiple biographies
independent of books? The books are talking among themselves.
As though anyone were really themselves interested in textiles... Everyone
just wants to think they're getting away with a small crime. We pretend
to hate plastic and are sure to get plenty of fiber, but we cook our
lunch in microwaves and form small societies for praising the Rio Grande
as the symbol of the authentic.
We like to point to the America south of our America. So pretending
you're someone else is a rite of passage where you're forced to erect
false gods in the name of your self, then fall into them never to be
seen again, your woof and warp absorbed in a quilt of soft tissue.
Then you're gathered at the edges with strong elastic and sent on your
way. They laugh at this in Latin America. But here, we post our histories
on the world wide web and take pains to document every momentary lapse
into desire for the center, every error of hurt, until eventually we
build a keep of myth.
We gawk at the one in the corner who has assembled a pile of lint and
is giving it to passersby - his private ritual against evildoing, his
own little version of Metl-xictli, of which he dreams each night and
records in a little manuscript.
When he has enough material, he'll put together a Society Even Smaller
Than Himself, whose only mistake will be collecting it all in one book
which describes the Society so completely that everything else that
can be said about it is inscribed on a small piece of cloth, which at
this moment is drifting to the bottom of a puddle in the jungle of Central
America.
by Brian Clements