Arrival

I’ve eaten too many cinnamon cream cookies in an effort to feel grounded

and want to bring the rest to encamped students at George Washington 

University, my alma mater now threatening student suspension. I am astounded

by the boringness of administrators–not astounded, but aggrieved.  Emotions 

emerge: If I feel good at all today it is because of these students and my sister

at UT Austin facing mounted police and all the movement work my sister

and comrades have done at Rutgers that’s gotten zero media attention. Why whisper

when you can chant. The not-yet-migraine neck pain, everyday traducement.

Not concerned about students, protestors, Palestinians or anyone being peaceful.

Charmed and unconcerned, I prepare a list of technical requirements for a thing

at work. In serious WTF news I interviewed for a position with a base salary of 200k.

Do they know who I am, minor poet and basket weaver wearing an old bra, no

socks.  When am I most disoriented? Is it falling asleep or waking up? Disorientation

is all I’ve ever wanted, disorientation and love and wine, a little making out

on the beach before a nap. This will not scandalize you nearly enough, the absurd

duplication of so many absurd tasks resulting in so many absurd work products.

Without cessation, I project facial expressions, offer various hand gestures,

express frustration with self and supervisor and self as supervisor. Antispasmodic

digital products could be a thing, I think, as I add funds to Desmond and Coco’s

Scholastic book fair e-wallets. What I want to call incredible panic is entirely

credible, completely the norm. What should not be the norm are mounted police

at anti-genocide protests in the United States.  Other norms to rethink: my inability

to function without fluoxetine. There is no benign baseline to account for my quarterly

increase in panic, and those capsules are all out hard to swallow.  By Friday afternoon 

I lack civility or social filters. “I have left the office,” I Slack my boss, “would you like me

to return and do x, y, z?” No response. Three nights ago the full moon had me swoony

with longing to sing of impending doom in a mournful, unearthly voice: it’s too late.

Nothing’s on the rise, it’s here, it’s here, so I sing like a banshee about the means of

thwarting reactionary violence as if I know what business as usual is not, as if I am

not distrait and taciturn with premonition. Desmond climbs three-quarters of the way

up a tree and says, “these leaves are my home and will protect me.” Yes, child. Stay

in the tree. We don’t have to go home and work, or make dinner, or sleep to be

productive tomorrow, or double-check that the datagrams have sufficiently passed 

across the network to whatever degree that matters. I check the plants. The fig tree leafs

around and out, the aphids eat some honeysuckle and I overprune it. As biased as

an oblique slant athwart empire, which means these statistics run a sharp transverse 

across conventional presumptions. Can we arrive crossways? Can whatever arrives 

arrive crossways? Miles east in Ohio Brett reminds me that literal Nazi’s are protected

on campus under free speech laws. That’s how this is arriving, arrives, has arrived.