LAGUNA LACUNA
There are shades of blue that will have been not been being there. But there will have been being
the six zeros trailing vermillion. There, there will have been being some statements that will have
been being full of O’s—do not go, not so soon. And there—there, there will have been being
figures of speech which will have been being made literal by animals, and there will have been
being some other animals, and there will not have been being a third category (nor the wedge
you will have wished for for its being opened): one that will have dis- and absolved you.
It will not have been being the case, the case will have been being flung wide open and your
dead dad’s Wranglers will have been staggering everywhere, they will have been being full of
holes that you never did make. Nobody’s goldschläger will have been being gulped by you. You
will have been smoking cigarettes till your underwear smelled like cigarettes. You will have been
claiming that things are the Cadillacs of themselves, but thinking that the world is empty of
Cadillacs.
PUSH, PULL, AND LINGER
As per the death drive, Death will have been driving, like in the Emily Dickinson poem in which
he stops for her. As per being-toward-death, Emily Dickinson will have been driving through
Amherst, like in this poem, in which Death is Massachusetts.
Everywhere there will have been being the voice of a woman—the narrator of Chris Marker’s
Sans Soleil will have been narrating everything. But everyone will have been imagining that this
was the voice of Marianne Moore; that Marianne’s voice was its own little camera, saying it was
quite like this, quite like that.
A film still will have been being a still film. The whole here will have been playing the part of the
part; the part here will wholly have been being the whole that will have been playing the part of
the part.
Freud will have been reading Heidegger, and upon closing Heidegger Heidegger will have been
being collapsed inside of Heidegger—the only pop-up figure to have written his own pop-up
book (and to have locked its little, black cover behind him). Emily Dickinson will have been sitting
quietly, and Marianne Moore will have been sitting quietly—from different directions despite
reaching the same quiet.
Atop the water in the light a still film will have been being—water lit up; film unfurling furllesly
such that it will have been stilling in its fell-swoopedness. Water will have been being, images will
have been being seen.
Things will never have been being gotten at. Though some things will have been being gotten to.
Chris Marker will have been speaking the old French, dying the old death, eventually; making the
old additions and subtractions. The most clichéd thing that we will have been doing was dying.
There will have been being a religion in all that, but the camera will have been being too close to
say which, when, and in what order. It will only have been being glimpsed, as if through a
keyhole in time, that the external world consists of internal references.
Then it will have been raining so lightly that the air will have been flickering. It will have been
morning (morning will have been being a verb) again.
Coleman Edward Dues is the author of the chapbook Pop-Country Sellout (Wry Press, 2022). His writing is published in Fence, Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, and the Cleveland Review of Books, among other places. He works at the Academy of American Poets.