DEATH STAR

by Gary J. Shipley

Every year on Planet Earth they slaughter
75 billion land animals, a laundry list,
for fun. I would go on, I could
catalogue the lot, if my paratactic urge
wasn’t just this piss-poor thing. I’m eating
ladles full of snot. I’m taking wasps apart
and sucking on the sting. This place is not
a place. This place is no-place. I’ve never been.
Nothing here is even happening. And even if
it did, they couldn’t mean it. How could they?
How could something that tastes this good
have any meaning? We exonerate your joy
via direct brain interface. We recalibrate
your cat. We make it piss itself, we make it
horny, we make it shit. Being civilized
in the 21st Century means no one has to
mean anything anymore. Matter out of place is
dirt. In the forest, if you cut the throats
of a thousand cows a day and no one sees it,
does it hurt? Does dyskinesia go hand in hand
with your amnesia? A limbless enigma
means the overall message gets lost without
needing to move. Pigs shoot mostly-dead a cow
in the slaughterhouse carpark, and everyone cries
buckets of warm blood donated in a single afternoon
to help irrigate the desert. Our flatulence
has its own cellular intelligence.
The circumference of the world is just
the circumference of the world.
You do not get to organize the earthquake
into so many ducks. When the floods come
we move upstairs. I pretend to go nuts
so I can swim in the legume. My torpor/arousal
cycle has a cattle prod for a seat
and square wheels. I have a mind
for mindless scrolling. Laughing yourself
inside out is not a good look. Viral fatigue
went viral, so we put chillies in our eyes
and ate our pets. The men in porn get hard
the way hard sci-fi is hard. It’s not necrophilia
if you’re both dead. We binge something evil
on cameos of kindness. We’re the walking fed.
What’s the not of this? Lovers reunited
in death means one more shout out
for silence.

Gary J. Shipley is the author of numerous books, including Stab Frenzy, So Beautiful and Elastic, Terminal Park (Apocalypse Party), The House Inside the House of Gregor Schneider (Cloak), Bright Stupid Confetti (11:11 Press), 30 Fake Beheadings (Spork), and You With Your Memory Are Dead (Inside the Castle). His monograph on Baudrillard, Stratagem of the Corpse, is available from Anthem Press and Cambridge Core. More information can be found at Thek Prosthetics.