Harsh Measures
“How lovely the world must have been
Before the arrival of man.”
— Giuseppe Ungaretti, “Prayer”
A new guillotine at the beauty parlor.
A cohort of applied linguists removing the non-gendered nouns from the Welsh language.
Breathalyzers to monitor the isopropyl alcohol on the windshield wipers of self-driving cars.
Major pharmaceutical suppliers withdrawing from the capital punishment market.
Alberi incantati: the morphological implications of the first journey east of Eden, the back-formation by which the silent trees bore witness to a brother’s slaying.
Combing her long twisted hair, eyes red with weeping, the banshee keens a coming doom, a world fitted with gizmos and thingumajigs, raindrops on a ferry of stone.
When Chih Men said, “An oyster swallowing the bright moon,” his wife replied, “A rabbit getting pregnant.” They were hungry, and so too were the children. Where fruits are ripe in trees heavy with monkeys, lawyers haggle over his wisdom. The mind a flaw in a mirror.
Fertilizing the dew, the snail’s tender horns leave a luminous wake over the grave’s green comforter. And the Earth sings.