Banana Palace
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Contents
Title Page
Note to Reader
Across the Sea
Dmitry Itskov: A Cento
The Gods Are in the Valley
Morning News
Talk Show
By the Waters of Lethe
Moo and Thrall
Lady Xoc
Urgent Care
A Debris Field of Apocalypticians—a Murder of Crows
En Route
1 Morning Drizzle, Chicken Little
2 Office Hours
3 Critique
4 Someone Else’s Cake
5 Sixth and Cumae
6 Selfie
7 Happy Hour
8 Going Under
9 A Book before Bed
10 Man semblable,—mon frére!
Fortune Cookie
Banana Palace
Murray, My
The Living Teaching
Meanwhile
Melancholia
My Sentence
The Point of the Needle
Watching the Sea Go
At the End of My Hours
Notes
About the Author
Also by Dana Levin
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks
ACROSS THE SEA
1
We used our texting machines
to look up the definition of soul
in the middle of class—
thumb-joints at work
above the stitched paper
of actual books in which
we’d been reading
poetry
about a Prophetess,
one of the human cave-bound Time Machines…
She had traveled a long way through the four dimensions
to be with us.
From someone’s mouth to someone’s ear.
Someone’s hand
to tablet, papyrus, parchment, paper, the liquid crystal light
of our computer screens—
Liquid crystal light they’d really
called it that,
the inventors
at Marconi Wireless.
“See if you can hear anything,
Mr. Kemp!” Marconi had cried, the day they sailed the letter S
across the sea—I loved
the synesthesia of that, See if you can hear, they’d coaxed some radio waves
to propel the alphabet
through the air—
Was that Marconi wishing
he was a liquid crystal light and not a
break of bones
that had to fear the future—
2
A human-headed bird, the Egyptians said.
A butterfly, an innermost.
A Web site
I was afraid to enter: wewantyoursoul.com the students
laughed and laughed—
soul-adorning, soul-afflicting, soul-amazing—
soul-and-body-lashings—
They really called it that, the ropes they wound
round oilskin
to keep out sea and storm, our sailing men—
who sent the cheeriest message you could imagine
to usher in
the Telegraphic Age: Thanks
am well—
The soul, it was an ellipse in white, it fizzed,
their chaplains said, with God’s
CPR,
“breath of life”—
So they could travel
through length and width and depth and time and
man a ship—
where someone
in a small room
would tap out a message—
to a far man on a far shore, and they
would understand one another…
3
He shared all roads and he braved all seas with me,
all threats of the waves and skies is what the Hero says
of his dead father—but it sounded like soul to me.
Guide companion—Captain
of the ship of flesh I had to ride, where “I”
was a third thing in the closed grip
of the body’s vise—
Marconi, he thought he’d hear
the agony of Christ
with a sensitive dial to help him sieve.
He trawled
the frequencies—
for eli lama sabachthani no song lost—
no impress of tongue and teeth that made a sound, ever lost—
if you had a receiver—
a virgin say, in a mountain crag, or a brain-bot
from the tnano-future, did it
matter which—
You’d have a house
for a god’s mouth
and it would message you
your rescue…
Rescued from what is what I’m trying to mean.
Rescued from what you have to fear the future
more than you used to which sounded like the soul
waving a series of flags at me—
4
We wanted arrival to be instant
because we didn’t want to be separate
from what we loved.
Wireless, weightless, and omniscient is how we
refined our machines—
We had a dream
that we could smash the bans
of matter and time and
still be alive—
Was that the soul, wishing
we would invent the body
out of existence,
so many of us now
enthralled by doom…
The students peer so deep into their handheld screens they
look like Diviners.
Each one
a scrying Sibyl at the world’s
end—
scribbled-on leaves thrown out of their caves
and into the wind—
The only part of the Epic
I make them read, just after
the crew is borne ashore, but before
the walk amongst the dead—
The part between.
Where there’s a body, agonized by light.
And someone lost.
And a query—
DMITRY ITSKOV: A CENTO
Dmitry Itskov, 32, has a colossal dream: an early start
for his own
mechanical face.
He’s one of the men with brains, wondering How—
To evade
the death of meat, he thinks—
By 2045 we’ll have “substance-
independent minds,” then
no need for biology at all…
At 25, he started to have the symptoms of a midlife crisis:
the musical instruments unlearned, the books unread—
The more he contemplated the world, the more broken it seemed—
“What we’re doing here does not look like the behavior of grown-ups,
killing the planet and killing ourselves.”
Decoupling the mind from the needy human body
could pave the way for a more sublime human spirit—
It could allow paralyzed people to communicate,
or control a robotic arm or a wheelchair—
It could allow you to start your car if you think,
“Start my car”—
Within a century, we’ll frequent “body service shops,”
choose our bodies from a catalogue, then
transfer our consciousness
to one better suited for life on Mars—
“From the very beginning,” he said, “we realized Dmitry
was not an ordinary person.”
He leads a life that could best be described as monastic—
No meat, fish, coffee, alcohol, or cold water—
Meat gives him an energy he’s “not comfortable with.”
What is the brain? What is consciousness?
It contains plenty of terrifying, brink-of-extinction plot twists.
It’s somewhere between a cellphone call and teleportation.
It’s speaking with his voice in real time.
Get right up close to Dmitry Itskov and sniff all you like—
He has the kind of generically handsome face and perfect smile
that seem computer generated,
complete with all the particulars of consciousness and per
sonality—
Yes, we have seen this movie and yes, it always leads to robots
enslaving humanity—
For now, just acquiring a lifelike robotic head
is a splurge.
THE GODS ARE IN THE VALLEY
eighth century, Chinese
The mind sports god-extensions.
It’s the mountain from which
the tributaries spring: self, self, self, self—
rivering up
on curling plumes
from his elaborate
headpiece
of smoke.
His head’s on fire.
Like a Paleolithic shaman
working now in the realm of air, he
folds his hands—
No more casting bones
for the consulting seeker, this gesture
seems to mean.
Your business, his flaming head suggests,
is with your thought-machine.
How it churns and churns.
Lord Should and Not-Enough,
Mute the Gigantor, looming dumb
with her stringy hair—
Deadalive Mom-’n’-Dad (in the sarcophagus
of parentheses
you’ve placed them)—
He’s a yogi, your man
with a hat of smoke. Serene, chugging out streams
of constructed air…
Mind’s an accident
of bio-wiring, is one line of thinking.
We’re animals that shit out
consciousness, is another.
The yogi says:
you must understand yourself
as projected vapor.
Thus achieve your
superpower.
MORNING NEWS
We were mutants, we were being
put into groups.
Assigned a patch of gymnasium floor—
A gelatinous plasma with star-sparking
was part of my body—
Next to me a woman who grew food from her skin, we would
never go hungry—
as I lit our escape
through tunneling darks.
Which was the beginning of a different, more
courageous dream—
Self-lit, self-fed, we’d be
compensating masters for the world’s
want—
throwing out thread
so we could grow enormous in oval webs—
Gently led to lie down—
Hard mats on the gymnasium floor and then
I woke up—
A regular member of the day parade, not
changed at all—
Despite the speeding heft of the changed life, its
morning news—
The death of ice, of food, of space, what
we call Doom—
which might be a bending—
a flow of permissions—
to forge a mutant form—
TALK SHOW
I’m being interviewed on a television talk show, I’m an expert on breathing. “Sooo,” the host croons. “Oxygen. How’s that feel?” “Like having an alien in your chest,” I say, and the live audience roars. “Let’s see you breathe,” the host says. “Go ahead, lung up—” and I do, inhaling and exhaling to wild applause.
It’s billed as an “in-depth two-part exclusive” on retaining the use of all my limbs. “Which do you like better,” the host asks, “twirling your hair or jiggling your foot? Opening a door or kicking it closed? Which,” he leans in, “would you prefer: Parkinson’s or polio?” Flustered, I start to stand up and he slaps his hands to his face, saying, “She’s standing up, ladies and gentlemen, she’s standing up—” and I freeze, to mounting applause, half in and half out of my chair.
It’s another television talk show and I’m “the Doctor of Digestion,” a metabolic whiz. They wheel me out to the stage, perched on an old-timey stand-up scale. “Sooo,” the host croons. “Food. How’s that feel?” Someone cues video and we turn to montage: laparoscopic images of everything I’ve had to eat for the last three days. “Carne Adovada!” the announcer booms. “Split Pea Soup!” Each announcement meets with wild applause. When the video ends I turn back to the host but find you, smoldering comfortably in the host’s appointed chair—you lean forward smiling, your skull-eye gleams, you stick your black-boned finger right down my throat.
BY THE WATERS OF LETHE
Who will help me avoid my meat
suit?
Who will help me
never again, I need an excarnation
specialist—
Having been born,
I get so tired
waiting and waiting for the world to end—
Such a slow
drip,
rushed by occasional
devastations: flood, fire, storm, plague, the whole
routine—Still,
we keep arriving, so much meat born
every day
amongst the racket of bones: the ice slide, the ocean rise, the wrecks
of megalopoli
along the coasts—Monster corn. Methane
glory holes.
Hasn’t there been
enough of that, on the Plain
of Forgetfulness,
that waste—how many times I’ve crossed!—of rock and flame.
These days,
you ghost through that and arrive alive in a world
that burns just the same.
Fuck that. I’m going back to Camp
Oblivion—