Joshua Poteat

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from Joshua Poteat’s Illustrating the Machine That Makes the World [From J. G. Heck’s 1851 Pictorial Archive of Nature and Science]:

Illustrating the seventeenth century

             [PLATE UNKNOWN]

after Bohumil Hrabal

Evening comes, black wig of roots after the storm.

             Dandelions cataract the ditches, deserted as stars,

a star in each milky eye, a star like the hole you shoot

                          through a pillowcase. That is something

they never ask you: What is death to these weeds?

             What is beyond suffering? It doesn’t mean we will

all turn out horribly. It just means too much rain

                          can make a weed drunk with courage.

It used to be called chivalry, to save a girl

             from the mouths of beasts, then take

her foot in your mouth for your own doings.

                          To lure a tapeworm up from the caverns

of your bowels, give yourself a milk bath.

             A peasant hoeing in the fields once took

his thumb for a grub and hacked it off.

                          Nobody appreciates these kinds of things

anymore. Even money’s lost its charm.

             We’re inclined to tragedy now.

There was always someone carrying

                          his guts off in a bucket back then.

The dead have a name for it,

             but they aren’t talking.

Given’s as good as gone.