C Y N T H I A    S A I L E R S
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AGAINST INTERPRETATION

 

after the death of Susan Sontag

 

We have no limbs here, in a new state
like Nebraska. There is a film in which
you fuck me harder.

You invite me into avenues
like irrational things. An affair
with the illiterate who are so against
interpretation.

To avoid blaming you for my lack.

This criminality of liking things
without limbs.

Not to be literal. There are objects
making memories. There is a plaza
but where are my boots? As if my fantasy
is here.

How's it going?

Surprisingly moral in a modern age.
Like the priorities of a government
reliant on image. We can only denounce
these thinkers who failed to realize
we can speak of having an identity at all.

How it is with history
being consumed with guilt.

We do not have the concept of memories
We do not have a nature beyond ourselves.

In front of a television set for hours
nothing we do, finally, is meant
by being a man. What you insisted

on believing in order to be reasonable.
What you meant by feeling sucked off, self-centered.

It is more like having a language
with myself inside it. I am largely a product
of an amateur.

I am only because "we remain animals
with an animal identity." I have been
taught to be ignorant like children.

There is a part of our bodies that
is self evident.

But first, what is wrong with slavery?

If only because there is a problem with commitment.

If only a novelist understands.

You do not have to respond.

I can not walk away how hard I try.
How do you know this when there
are no churches. When there are

strangers, representing, desiring
marketplaces that you regarded
as daily life. An information
bulletin situated like a map where
obstacles and entrances are clearly marked.

We are consumed by the consequences.

We are remorselessly abstract.

Those judgments are nonchalant, but yet
I invite you to imagine that I'm irrelevant.

You can be my devotee when I loose an arm.
You can find somebody's interest
should be promoted over ours

however, hard we might try
to be a kind of communication
however, these shattered cities were known
to be allies. I may scrutinize these statements:

Aren't you tired of thinking like a prisoner
when you could be thinking like a criminal again?

 

 

n e x t

 

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*with lines from Guy Madden's Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Terry Eagleton's After Theory

 

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