THE MURMURING GRIEF OF THE AMERICAS (You are on the ground...)
Daniel Borzutzky
You are on the ground, wrapped in a ratty blanket at the edge of the cage. The interpreter wedges her way into the corner. She sits on her knees, brings her head to your mouth so she can hear the whispers that barely come:
I don’t know where I am. I don’t know who my parents paid for me to get here.
She slides your hat off so the cameras can see you more clearly. You refuse to open your eyes. It is what you have been instructed to do. But the director is unhappy: with the blocking, the angles, the shadows. He asks the interpreter to tell you to look into the camera as the hat is removed from your head.
The assistants give your wrapped-up body a few rolls. They twist you into the proper position, at which point a doctor asks you to open your mouth, to say ahhh while you look into the camera.
This moment here, with your mouth open and the doctor looking into it, is where the scene is supposed to turn. Something transcendent is supposed to happen. But the director can’t figure out how to realize his vision. He yells cut, then confers with his colleagues about what should flow out of your mouth.
Their opinions differ. One suggests a butterfly. Another suggests a snake. Another a stream of the most beautiful words spoken first in a foreign language then translated by a child with a sweet voice, an adorable accent that perfectly articulates how your body and mouth convert the murmuring grief of the Americas into a currency of empathy, accumulation, and massacre.
The crew meets for several more minutes to discuss what should come out of your mouth after the doctor asks you to say ahhh. But the director pauses as soon as the cameras start to roll. He is unhappy about something. There should not be a sunset in the background. There should not be flowers in the foreground.
The world will be dark until we douse his body with light.
THE MURMURING GRIEF OF THE AMERICAS (there are children crossing the river)
Daniel Borzutzky
there are children crossing the river some float on cardboard and some hold on to each other and some sing we are alive there are neon lights above the river the camera crews stand on the banks and film the river in the right light they film the floating children in the right light they film the sky turning purple and pink as fluffy pollen dissolves in the warm air a tree with edible fruit is in the background droopy white flowers with long petals hang downwards and by the tree a brother and sister exhausted
don’t die the director says to the children if you die we won’t be able to make this film and if we don’t make this film there will be no evidence that once you were alive and if there is no evidence that once you were alive no one will know that we loved you
the children step out of the river and walk to a bridge and on the bridge there is a sign that says welcome to the promised land but the sign is not meant for the children it is meant for the early Americans who are chasing the children the early Americans do not enter the scene to be documented they are there to hunt the children they try to trap the children on the bridge but they do not arrive in time they meet the children on the other side of the bridge where the camera records one of them saying welcome to the Promised Land you little wart hogs and there is gunshot and the children run off in different directions the camera doesn’t know who to follow one child is shot in the leg and the camera zooms in on his blood as the early Americans drag him away
the camera catches up with the children later that night when they set up camp on a spinach farm the director takes great pleasure in filming the older children as they care for the young ones they feed them and bathe them and sing songs and play games with them like Simon Says and Simon tells the children to stop speaking he tells the children to stop breathing he tells the children to stop wanting he tells the children to stop thinking he tells the children to stop being themselves he tells the children to become someone else to become something else and the children say how do we do that and Simon says you listen to the earth at the right time it will tell you what to do but he knows that the earth is a liar
After Simon puts the children to bed the camera lingers on his face as he weeps and he tells himself stop speaking and he tells himself stop breathing and he tells himself stop eating and he looks into the camera and says the pain in my mouth won’t stop the pain in my eyes won’t stop my tongue is burning my lips are burning my soul needs to rest he says your soul? stop breathing he tells himself I need to die again he says because when I die again I will become the river that runs between myself and myself I will become the mountains that separate myself from myself and you will deposit new meaning into my body as I become the story you’ve been waiting for
But in the story you’ve been waiting for I will not be an I and you will not be a you and
for several minutes water will run toward me and it will be the river
of death and I will say no no it is not the river of death it cannot be
the river of death but by the time I get the words out of my mouth the
river of death will have emptied itself out and the river of death will
be gone and the past will not be the past and I won’t know what it means
to be dead
THE EMPIRE OF THE CORPSE FOLDS INWARD
Daniel Borzutzky
Because the dead felt ashamed of dying in the walls
Because the dead felt ashamed of the flowers that covered their graves
Because there was a war in my skin
My skin blemished with the guts that dripped from the rotten chickens hanging above me
Because we were trapped underground absorbing the silent fucking of the dead
Because the living felt ashamed of the dead trapped in the walls
Because the sky was so full of gas and we could not see the moon
There were pictures of naked bodies drawn on the chalkboards of the rooms they buried us in
Every once in awhile, they poured milk through the hole in the wall and we cupped our hands and drank it even though it was sour and made us vomit
We were rotting under the florescent lights that covered our bodies
Because X had no chest they filled her legs with honey and set her outside on the lawn
We watched the ants devour her
We watched foam come out of her skin and the room grew so humid
Slippery bodies we fell over ourselves and got hungrier as we watched the ants nibble her flesh
Y told the story of how X had an orgasm in the pond
She let the water rush in between her legs and rubbed her pelvis against the rocks
Her hair went out to sea
Her tingly skin her pulsating skin the wavering beat of her heart
They watched this and when she came out of the water they put her in a room to examine what beast had bitten her
They determined she had been bitten by crustaceans that had lodged themselves into her thigh and abdomen
There was no choice but to penetrate her more deeply
Funnels of foam
Funnels of ants
Squeezed into her orifices from multiple angles while the computer systems analyzed her pulse, her blood, her metabolism
They forced the minions to reproduce her body
Twenty six reproductions of her body placed in a holding cell multiplied in a systematic fashion
We were commanded not to speak while there were bodies rowing through the excrement of the flooded streets of our neighborhood
We were commanded to be silent while there were comrades choking on flesh sobbing on blood puking greenish bacon
The autopsy revealed the systematic fabrication of the clitoris
The names of our wounds were displayed on banners or painted on our bodies
The names of the corpse-emperors and their vampiry poems were pasted to our bodies
Soil on our lips raw meat on our tongues jars of mayonnaise to aliment to lubricate to bluster
It wasn’t the fault of the warden when he got an erection
A scabby finger accidentally patted his crotch
He didn’t mean to force the scabby finger onto his crotch
With a dark sheet he covered the face and body to whom the scabby finger belonged and he helped the scabby finger undo his zipper
What were the scabs on the finger from
He thought about the scabs on her finger
He thought about the blood trapped in her finger and it was not his fault he kept his erection
He thought: ejaculate and stuff her flesh with worms
He thought: reach the end and fill her mouth with foam
He held his breath as the moment reached and when it passed he thought:
The bodies buried in the wall the gutter the earth: the present is always the past for them
They must be killed again and again
