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Given Alters
We worship at the alters we are given. In the scouring brightness, screens obliterate faces and we forget the intended concealment and division. There is choice, that hall of mirrors, and dissent, favorite tool of the cutpurse— rapture. Pews of such ever increasing comfort and security hold us fast, hold us safe—bone and muscle, that necessary tension slackening, wasting, and fingers and hands smooth as marble, as glass, desperate for wood and dough, for resistance, calluses, grit, dirt, but—oh—oh those furious lights like fishhooks snagging and tugging, tearing away everything but the longing, those innocuous mosquitos descending, shadowy, vaporous and ephemeral, onto flesh, unguarded. We are given our icons of emotion, and we choose from the list. We consume in all the acceptable ways. Yesterday, I potted several aloe pups in a tiny plastic container, their unrooted stumps pressed to soil, and though the earth they touch was sold in plastic for a price, still, a layer of rocks holds them upright. They will build their foundation where they have been placed, where they touch the ground, though it is false, and I, filled with ideas about life from a television and a screaming, skreeding, and above all compliant feed, keep looking down, looking deep, longing to tear, tear, tear these wire roots up, out.