G.C. Waldrep

Who Are the Other Gods

the green tea god

the chainsaw god

the follicle god

the gods of archaic postage rates

the divorced god, the three-toed god

the god of the Apocrypha

certain orders of djinns & angels

the smokestack god

the denim god

the goddess who appears clothed exclusively

in ambergris and tourmaline, when

she appears at all

the god of empty ballot boxes

the Xerox god

the Parchesi god, the Monopoly god, the

Battleship god, and the Chutes 'n'

Ladders god

Albertus

the various demigods of cheese

the god of the Nun's Priest's Tale

the wood sealant god

the god of the refrigerated railway car

the corn syrup god

Great God Biology

the god of small polluted oceans

the goddess of the Australian crawl

the apotheosis of the somnambulant shepherd,

whose feast day is celebrated each year

on February 16 outside Woonsocket,

South Dakota

xantham gum

the bleachery god

the god whose name, loosely translated, means

"Runs with two fingers in his mouth"

the low-water god

the goddess of the hypothalamus, with her

burnished censers

the nematode god

the Bunn-o-Matic god

the goddess of spiritual seafood

the god of the pikestaff, the glaive, and other

obsolete armaments

the god of gouache

der Fenstermacher

the propane god

What Is a Hymn

A vault kneeling stresses rhythm from one frozen motion. This is not about time. This is not about the consideration of another's feelings. Another may come or go, may come and go, another may come or she may go and he may come again. This is not about personality. Whereas from a lectern any ice needle threads broadcloth some sure vacancy.

Another may come or go, another may come or he may go and may not come again. Purely voluntary. Or not at all voluntary else not pure. If the other is yoked, if the other is tired, if the other is frightened. If the other is very small. And so how round a vowel is it that forces static from the elms into a pale sky. We see this as candles.

The question is not which but another in his freedom, that is, in the expression of a broader interest or concern excitement or distaste. Call it nave or gable or something yet more curious eggs pelican cheese. (See What is a viola.)

A cantonment for one certain culture.

Threshold then is not the same as permission, i.e., may he come, may she go, may another substitute—reluctant creel—may there be an absence, may I be alone. I am alone and want and therefore you too with me. (See What is unison.) Is there any strength in the mutual application of a fixed surface.

Is not then paper, is not then voice. Drawn down from scope to hand-held satisfaction the plane of a dubious embrace. I question as does each in its small way. When thrown to the harp as eggs, as pelican, as license, as cheese it makes a simple roaming, it splays tethered, it does not go far. It can be heard across the river. It is an obstruction in a winter park.

What is a hymn, a hymn is a red dress, a hymn is a red dress that keeps swinging.

What Is a Symphony

Asia being among others a satisfactory explanation, teak and smoke beneath quack jade. A quiet saw can't hide it. Laundry reminiscent of manufacture glimmers sure pure. A soldier narrower than his waist can carry: think. No matter. He puts a sack to it.

Europe being less than satisfactory, slag and each progressive regime. History is no less than this. Is drum. Is six and a seventh beyond a talent generously revised and supplanted. Is horseflesh. Is pomade, is talcum. Is to rise to battlement, turret, steeple to the absence of tuck the rind in, is to drop it, to wait and listen and to seal in clean plastic.

Australia being one wild connexion between sand and land, Australia being breakfast. Tea and bacon and muffin and brocade and a penny shorn of its hollow boon, being penury, being distance not unsympathetic in a dry thaw. Which is to say no water except north south east and west. And tall ships sailing. Were this your rock would you pocket it like a red fish.

Africa being three and no more.

Antarctica being nine or ten but not always. A clock spins between water and the weight of a broad exculpatory benefaction. We kneel and bless. Are blessed. And discourse one cold tome. (In between which a commendable physic.)

South America being a baroque elaboration on a singular grace. Salt and coal deep down and the conspiracy of one blind beggar, they see this, they are not unmoved but prow no further. Three or four make five simultaneously. A kind man asks how many red fish would it really take.

North America being a northern being northern being north.

Who Is Carl Stalling

An anvil, certainly an anvil and certainly velocity and therefore also design. And measurement in the pure sense, that is, in machines in the heart of a machine glue and wires which make a machine a machine and fine. What makes a machine a machine. Intention and steel.

Quickness, what is quickness. Quickness is the adherence of an interval to a system. There is not so much languour now as indolence. I did not say metronome.

Captivity merits future study, it is this corruption that confounds each five-year plan. Heavy physics. A doubtful spectrum augments the possibilities of the nineteenth century. For example, the funicular railway. For example, the lantern slide. A postmortem collaboration with Whitman remains possible though not likely from this cracked cel.

What Is Melisma

Regard the aerosol quadratic more specious and more spacious than any foil swan. Chip by chip the ice asks, Where do we live? An endless tape loop patched: a deceitful repair, now we can never end a journey.

Some numbers extend quantity into the metaphysical via language. Planck's constant, the Fibonaccis, pi. (Not that the animals don't count in their soft bodies.)

A continuous function. A sepalled truncheon.

The ego, imaginary this time. Each quasar, red giant, each white dwarf compels attention; appetite as from a point source distracts. I begin to hear those same three dormitory chords again and again. A seasonal novelty: THIRD-QUARTER GROWTH OF THE OVENBIRD CARTEL.

No one lives this long without at least considering yoga. This is benign, this is the soul's repeating decimal. This is a plenary apparel, this is one sharp thread.

Meanwhile the seas keep rising: metric creep. Biting flies and fish houses of Wanchese.

I riffle through my closets. Shirts, trousers, mutze, vests. Were I so gainly in other light. Somewhere, I know, there's a perfect shade of two.