An Internet of Containment

Anne-Adele Wight

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

An Internet of Containment
by Anne-Adele Wight
Copyright © 2018

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Armond Scavo

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-329-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952728

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My intention is to tell of bodies changed
To different forms; the gods, who made the changes,
Will help me——or I hope so——with a poem
——Ovid, trans. by Rolfe Humphries

 Container Meditation

What’s a bowl? What’s a container? What does it mean to contain?

A bowl: generally understood as concave and reasonably sound. But if the bowl is
broken? Is it still a bowl? What if the bowl has been repaired but can’t hold anything?

What if the bowl has been repaired with gold instead of glue?

Suppose the bowl has been restored with synthetic resin, repainted, and displayed in a
museum. It becomes treasure, its temperature and humidity controlled, even though it
was once pulled from hot sand or scraped out of cold clay.

Its display case is also a container. The museum contains the display case. And so on,
fractally.

Suppose this: a colony of bowls overturned in a desert. All intact, suddenly convex
through being overturned. If something is hiding under one of the bowls, does the bowl
contain it?

If the object can move from under one bowl to under another? Containment becomes
random, a game of chance.

Suppose the container isn’t a bowl, but a cylinder flung into space? Inhabited?

What if the container is neither bowl nor cylinder, but a sad bone mesh encasing a soft
body?

What if the container is a waterborne Trojan horse? All containers remember water; all
water evaporates in air. Teacup, valve, atmosphere.

When all the sand in the world fuses to glass, is there still such a thing as a glass of water?

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 I

A Stampede of the Sun


 Innocence like a Sewing Machine

humans are turning to metal without knowing it

the Tower of Babel throws its shadow to one side
we conceive decision as a form of titanium

flat-out iridescent our planted seeds come up lanterns

one meter stick measuring all the world’s water

an army of shadows need only inspire doubt

cannon takes on innocence like a sewing machine
our pathway through the sun comes and goes

on its far side a judgment of blue cranes

when the sea looks magic like an angled sail

or a rock painting of the future

primary colors topped with one blind eye
a vision of sunrise without language

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 Reasons for Leaving Earth

Because we overflowed our container. Because we ate it from inside and left a riddled
shell.

Swarms of us are leaving the solar system with only a theory of where we’re going and
what we can expect.

Not everyone left by any means. The die-hard percentage struggles. A scatter of
resources drives them to cooperate, but how long can they keep that up? Spoiler alert:
they will indeed die hard.

The rest of us develop relationships with our travel modules. How can they be so much
larger inside than outside? Some ask endless questions about the heat shield; most of us
would rather not know.

Our notion of time expands with our view of space. Evolution changes its tense from
past to future. What brought us is no longer the point.

Biology races for survival, conditions unknown.

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 You Can See the Equator

we take off like a goat’s leap

outward spiral threading around earth
our blended directions
humming a high spin of wire
not a myth but golden
you can see the Equator

death rides next to us with a scent of explosive

geometric forces bridge the air

as earth’s right brain surfaces from the Pacific

an icebox in open water
an absence of cold
our foredeck patterned on deconstruction

from here the aurora has changed color

purple bronze like a pheasant crossing a lawn

losing our ambitions leaving only

the pointed stars we used to map them
winning a flight at near—light speed
through an optical flicker of sunsets

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 Salt as a Shower of Glass Bowls

then question whether sun and moon own this turf or heat it periodically, creating
subliminal / sublingual grass tides

remotely seen from off-planet

picture a grassland brimming with glass bowls, each bowl opaque, each bowl a grain of
salt

each sounding a different note

where horses pound a continuous oval / ellipse, trying to catch each other and mate

scatter salt from a shaker, watch glass bowls shower over the center of a continent

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 Illusions Attendant on Leaving Earth

Initial drop through an undersea tower. A critical mass displaced, internal heft of organs
in distress.

Falling through a special-effect 3-D lattice, I wrap my arms around my ribs to make my
body a drill. I believe in the air pocket, placing faith in something that may not exist.

For whose benefit the lattice? Biofeedback of myself as water.

Falling sharply from the air pocket into saline jelly, all that remains of the sea bed. Can
these conditions persist? Low drop into a sewer.

Dumped like waste into earth’s core, molten center left cold and vacant. Hollow tolling
as from a meteor. Biofeedback of myself as geode.

We stand on the border of transformation 1.

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 A Thin Film Separates the Solar System from Deep Space

a membrane wraps the solar system

translucent surface elliptical quiver
(we assign it a role in our pageant)

shoving a hand through the airlock

punching something
(its rubber scream)

the membrane contains:

dramatis personae
eight planets
five dwarf planets
an asteroid belt
comets
at what point does the stage get crowded?

eager likeness of membrane to plastic wrap

(our attempted grab)
hairline proximity as planets pass on their carousel

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 Sun as Parasol as Container

Beyond the asteroid belt the sun reshapes itself. It should shrink with distance, but here
it unfurls into a yellow parasol.

Jupiter monitors our approach with its one eye.

This is a paradox: the sun as sun protection. What do we renounce and what do we keep?
We edit our vision remorselessly.

From Jupiter to Chiron we steer a course to the rim of the sun’s yellow bowl.

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 Suburbs of Neptune

The formal dance evenings begin as we breach the suburbs of Neptune.

Champagne circulates while a string quartet plays inside a wire cage. Couples waltz
under three soaring Palladian windows.

The newly unveiled ballroom has a dark blue floor set with a tiny yellow sun that rotates
away from the dancers, adjusting its tempo to match theirs.

Canapés accompany the crystal champagne flutes. Men lick dabs of beluga caviar from
women’s wrists as the women ask each other, “Can this be love?”

Couples waltz toward the sun like cats chasing their tails. The sun glides away, always
keeping pace with the dancers.

Filmy curtains cover the tall windows; nobody looks behind them. Viewing outer
Neptune induces nausea.

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 How to Map Your Way out of a Jar

Make it linear but not too obvious, accepting the more efficient lineation of crow flight.
There are no crows in freefall. Black the cosmos, blacker than wings jammed in space.

Wear a broad-brimmed hat and carry water.

Check your GPS reading. The outer planets have no corresponding coordinates, leaving
the reading open to interpretation.

Bypass chasms and floodwaters. Wear shoes that can carry you up a glass wall.

Carry bear bells and ring them like a low-rent Christmas. You are Ursa Major’s
equivalent of a ham sandwich.

Check your compass reading. The outer planets have no magnetic north; see instructions
for interpreting your GPS reading.

Avoid hallucinatory people who appear out of nowhere carrying maps. They may
introduce themselves as Orion or Gemini, but they are the ultimate bad company.

The jar lid could present difficulties, so bring an all-purpose tool to open it from inside.
Question the wisdom of what you’re doing. Your terrified jar is traveling through a
vacuum at breakneck speed.

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 Going Mad at the Edge of the System

The Oort Cloud is an icy band forming the outer layer of the solar system and is
considered the origin of many comets.

I used to brandish at my enemies in the desert

so I slice my knuckles with a sword to show the sun I’m here
the sun unwinding like sliced carrot into a spiral

I take my bleeding hand to sick bay

sketch the tattoos I want and demand them
I want sun symbols on the back of my hand and up my forearm
I want the exact red of my arterial blood

when I raise that arm the sun will lock back into a ball
pull us close in or follow us out past the Oort Cloud
cattle call a bellowing wake of
comets a celestial herd

a transformed solar system a stampede of the sun

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