*
Growing up on the outskirts of the universe—provincial Ukrainian steppes—I was a devout reader of science fiction, in particular that of Eastern European masters, Strugatsky Brothers and Stanislaw Lem. At some point coveted translations of American sci-fi classics started to slide under the curtain. They were all the more otherworldly for their foreignness, for the shadow of another language and culture, which, even without aliens or portals, felt as remote as an extraterrestrial civilization.
After I settled in the U.S., I let go of sci-fi for nearly two decades. Perhaps because “alien”—”resident alien,” “legal alien”—were trigger words for me as an immigrant. Or maybe, sci-fi was just too bound up with my old-country self, which I was trying to erase.
Encountering the work of Samuel Delany, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Sun Ra not only rekindled my interest in the genre but altered my understanding of its possibilities. Rather than imagining a defamiliarized present or the evolution of technology, these artists searched for the deep future of the myth, spirit, and language. They searched for the future of otherness, desire, and the epic.
In these poems you may also find more than a hint of the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar—texts that allude to alternative realities: some of which exist alongside our own; others, tangled within; and others yet, completely unrelated, made of pure Light or pure Text.
Living in the Silicon Valley for the past four years with self-driving cars, security robots, drones, and remotely operated librarians may have something to do with all of this, too.
Anima
wasn’t the light of the unpronounceable name
wasn’t the shadow of another future, burning fingers
but the way the craft
encircled her body
with intimacy so ultimate
it could only be achieved by a machine
as it mimicked
the splintering
emotional carpet
she unrolled every time
the noise dropped for 8
seconds, when she was utterly alone
and as all space settlers
ritualistic
about—
this knowledge
you’re being disassembled
into a diaspora of atoms that know nothing
of each other’s existence
before coming together again
like water poured into a new glass
without any objective guarantee
of continuity
Testimony In Regard to The Vast Foam-like Umbrella
some call it theological equivalent of money laundering
I take issue with that—
gravity is contagious
and as a member of clergy I am entitled to—
it’s like parking anywhere—
the green shape
pulsates with its scraped horizons, circularity of obsession
I am standing, alone, with the tightest optical strain known to man
and you want me to—bless your—?
yes, I took the unbearable pink envelope
gematria equivalent of your soul’s worth
as a donation, as a joke, and chopped it, and rolled the color’s distance—
before I knew it, the thing
cuts its “eternal stasis” short
starts nipping at the non-representation
if anything, it was—numinous fundraising—
like I said, gravity
is contagious
so when the beam gave out
as a thigh might,
at sunrise, I was barely surprised
“there’s no need for it, really,” I said, three times,
as is the custom
everyone else
was already at the bath-house, dunking
just because you are being extrapolated
doesn’t mean you can’t be having a ball
No Eyes
After Zohar 2:94b–95a and 1:15a
not a telescope but a phantom limb
stretching towards the invisible—
is how the experiment’s outcome
was described to me; my consciousness, a small
price for this new form of travel
I was told I’d have to become
a mythic being with no eyes
concealed and revealed
in the garments that are not
calligraphy of life’s post-script
when I woke up blind and wanting
it was not my hand that reached across
cosmos to the stars we so wanted to see towards
the outside we were so desperate to find—
instead, their hands went into my corpus
my memory bled unto their fingertips
I could speak no words but laced
their echoes, in patience & sorrow
*
in the beginning, a burning mirror to erase
the dream of semblance, created
the dream of the missing alef,
which became the breath
of Elohim, the edge
of your song’s void
Cosmic Deregulation
I lost loads of time
eating information
pills in the ship’s abdomen—
we called it “the library”
(as a joke)
until one evening, in the back
of a bar on a desolate, backwater moon
I was introduced to methods
of ingesting vacuum
and felt cosmos not beer
running through me
in knowledge’s stead
“consciousness,” I called to the librarian,
“consciousness is a ritual,
not an organ
and intergalactic history
is a contracting theater
of shadow puppets
performed by my own hands
which keep opening
like goddamn eyes”
Mnemonics
alef is for the alien
bet for the great
alternatives to alienation
what are they?
vet for the inevitable
alienation from self,
from Marx
gimmel is the game-plan:
breathe
don’t alienate
other aliens
daled, face it: you got dealt
ancestral language you don’t even speak
hai is hail,
locusts, darkness
vav is David Meltzer’s: “Void
Angel Vav / Flea in my heart”
zayin and rules of creation
het: pull it
over your big alien ears
tet is taking alien to bed
yod, comma in sky
kaf the cup of alienation—runneth over, lookout
lamed for lame faux alien fur
mem is Middlemarch
nun is dawn—of aliens—
samech—same, ugh—
ayin for all you got your myopic Cyclops alien eyes on
pey for peyote toothbrush
tzadi whichever side you’re on, a thorn in
kof is cough, all aliens got it
reish for head rush, brain freeze, dead
giveaways of an alien
shin is for wake-up kick
tav for the vat
of drek & pride may we all rise from
[N.B. Cosmic Diaspora, Jake Marmer’s third collection of poems, is now available from Station Hill Press at http://www.stationhill.org/books/all/cosmic-diaspora/. The press’s summary reads as follows: “Cosmic Diaspora … brings together fantasy, hard-boiled sci-fi, Jewish mysticism, experimental poetics, free jazz, and dark, deadpan humor. Born in the wild steppes of Ukraine, Marmer brings his immigrant experience into a cosmic, diasporic disorientation and attempts to imagine the deep future of myth, spirit, and language. In Cosmic Diaspora, you may also find more than hints of the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar that allude to alternative realities, some of which exist alongside our own, while others are tangled within it—or are completely unrelated, made of pure Light or pure Text.”
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