In Shenzhen. The plastic injection molding machine considers itself, with reference to the way whales sink when they die in the ocean.
No tool to tell you
how the whale sinks down.
I become renewable,
without loss,
hoping to stop in time.
*
Each day the new
protagonist is here
in the factory. Billiard balls
in hot plastic. Molded parts asking
how do I sink in the sea?
can you show me?
*
I ignore this. Still wondering
how does the whale fall––
the original whale––
his great bones crushing down…
*
One whale body
will equal 2,000 springtimes
arriving
through more than an instant.
Muscles tip out
from spine––parachute
to the deep sea floor––
*
where no tool
may register how his death
spread in the dark.
How it multiplied
where fathoms loosen,
joints unfolding.
*
I stretch into
a shape. Do as I’m told
in plastics. Each mold
is a house
is an ocean but
only now do I know
his death was never some renewable
substance. The whale sank away––
out of contact,
and what they wanted me for
was to make more stuffs,
billiard balls,
toys
that would bounce
properly.
*
People invented
the paper bag. Invented
glass bottle factories. I tried
to measure my senses.
But there was only the sea
of my sinking: flushed
outflow. Products
marked by ejector pins––
stamps remembering the mold
pressed off after plastic pellets
melted in heat,
reformed.
*
Am still restricted. Smell
traducing these stairs, hot
force in the vents. I house
and unhouse––not knowing
what they send down
and out through me.
*
I am especially spread out
among 600,000 whales sinking now
across the ocean. They wanted
some renewable substance.
And no tool ready
to make more remembering.
*
Am alive
in great boxes that crush
down through the mammal.
Stuck inside
as an anecdote
the bells and whistles
whole greenhouses
with watering can, plastic plates and cups––
all of it falling, all of it the dead
protagonist
who enters the ocean
unprepared.
*
Still sketch a shape
sometimes. Become that shape, repeating.
What they began to invent
with ivory imaginations. Colonial characters
bound up on small
pages. Production which
is not just some marine snow
releasing its shadow.
*
Take perspective
and turn it.
The thinking body is
materials. Potential energy.
To have an emotion.
And wasn’t I the whale
sometimes?
*
If springtime
is a disgrace, I am still
here
through all the senses––how
the parachute escapes
off the whale––its muscle––and
I am angry, turbulent
crossing unusual smells
after ejector pins rock me
from the surface––I
detach
from the mold––an anecdote
is forming around
myself. a house. the gate
built without any true
sense of the mammal or
smell of sea––when after all
what people wanted was
the game to go on
forever, the billiard balls
to bounce into pockets––this
is not an essay it is not
efficient, sinking
like a gift––then what
can come up to me, to my side
down here, in little clicks
and vibrations––lacerations, potential
of hope––when smells move outward
creatures sense this
springtime arriving
where I stretch
into the story
of seen things. a staircase
still passing downwards––
these marks my measure,
gate of ejector pins,
a witness––here
where the ocean holds
this bland mark
Notes from the NORTHWEST INCINERATOR
(Concerning the Progress of the Ship KHIAN SEA)[1]
i.
What was the Northwest Incinerator,
I am. Ash-only piles:
heavy metals mobilized—
dropped as turbidity into waters
and easily brought airborne—
ii.
I know that ashes
are unwanted
but I want them—I feel
men cleaning me,
taking up more
to make into value
but Wayne, why
are they driving
away evidence, soft
sponging memory
pulled out, burned off
the grid—I need
to keep what we
recovered, emitted,
expelled—hold it on site
in words that name
my 14,000 tons
of weight—their taking it
elsewhere
iii.
My ash sailed out
on a contract—
they changed the boat’s
name, rechristened
its cargo—
for two years
they’ve carried the ash—
they tip
4,000 tons
onto the beach
near Gonaïves—
wind-blown
refuse
catches the air—
the locals say it’s killing
their goats—
vi.
So I linger, I pass
no longer
large or odiferous—
sent on over the ocean—
It has to do with
compliance: ash
stretching out
of perjury
and down under water
where what’s burned
spreads in materials
not yet inert
and the words
blunder—then
one crewmember
begs on the beach:
he says “no danger”
to a camera
he begs
by eating ash—
ix.
Night advanced—
no one sees
where I spread—
men move
with my corpse, unhoused
and this extends up
out of it—what emerges
in wild flowers, in small
pine trees—
this is where I stoop
this is where I stoop
before or after
expectation
when ash drops down—opens
under the foil
of the ocean
[1] When the ship Khian Sea departed from the port of Philadelphia in 1986 it carried over 14,000 tons of solid ash waste from a local facility. This ash––the product of the Northwest Incinerator––was originally bound for a dump site in the Bahamas. Rumors of the ash’s toxicity spread, however, and the Khian Sea was turned away from the Bahamas and, subsequently, from 11 other countries. Most of the ash was dumped along the ship’s route through the ocean.