There are only a couple of hours left in this year's version of April. We are confident that this iteration will infinitely reprise itself, though our spectral sources say that by 2157, the term "April" will have been replaced by an unpronounceable word that alludes to the majestic heat and windy cruelty of springtime in the northern hemisphere.
In accordance with such glimpses into future astronomical and geophysical possibilities, we are going to wrap up our second annual poetry series with the previously published sonnets of Things in Light co-founder and editor Rudolfo Carrillo, who reminds us that Tlön is closer to becoming than we can possibly imagine.
Sonnet for Amalthea
This ain’t a story built from good wood,
he said, while assembling imaginary
transdimensional super materials
into a fluid as heavy as Jupiter’s third
moon. Besides, the others might
gather together an army of squirrels
or squares. Both are considered good eating,
you know. There are alternatives to dusk
and did I tell you — he continued
in a voice reminiscent of the translucent
utterance ascribed to Zeppo when
confronted by the complexity of it
all — the way ashes cling to water is
just another word for the sky.
Sonnet Comprising Today’s Temporal Analysis
I found out my town was made from dust and corn, street people
and low flying jet aeroplanes. Sometimes an old turbo job swooped into view.
Inside the restaurants, people spoke about how bright the sun had been, whether
or not there would be enough rain to paint the streets with, like it was a holiday or
something like that. Everyone I knew drove a car that spit out smoke while loudly
proclaiming the continued ascendance of heavy metal. The pictures in the local
paper alluded to twisted mulberry branches. If you fashioned a plutonium-laden
symbol from those elemental moments, someone up in heaven would surely
smile at the heaviness that propelled the resulting storm clouds upward into what
could only be described as a fantastically elaborate void. After recording these
latest observations, I drank from the river with the solemnity of Coronado’s
thirsty horde, gamboling fiercely upon the shore, disguised as last month’s
flying insect ruler, conjuring articles of faith from yellow leaves. Sodium
lamps buzzed wantonly from electrified steel poles; it was never quiet here.
Sonnet Sixteen: Saltwater and Smoke
The past, or rather the world created
by expired occurrences and dangling
actions remains out of reach. The
inchoate symphony in everyman’s left eye
is a globe of indeterminate composition
and volume. Arms cannot grasp such
roundly articulate implications. Its girth
is unitary and expansive in directions
previously dismissed as outlandish,
as not befitting the shabby wizardry
defined on a Cartesian plane and
primarily used as a basis for moving
wind-driven, wooden caverns filled with men
and their produce across the vasty deep.
Sonnet After Kilgore Trout
The flattened portion of the universe you are currently viewing
is best displayed through soporific filter number seventy-nine point
sixty-three. You know the one I mean, don’t you, gentle reader?
It resides in a golden box, composing itself from ashes and modern
construction materials like citizenship and looming mortality.
A new tower built of bony fingers with missing legs upon its painted lips.
That form gives a rumbling grandeur to what was poured into it.
Infinity and nothingness make for subtle yet utilitarian hinges.
There is even a subroutine designed to increase the vividness and
the saturation of spring. Subsequently, the summer sun burns hours
into crevices available for entertainment or observation in a manner
similar to the power of photographs prior to their silvery obsolescence.
I have never been more hopeful about America. Smoke a cigarette
and masturbate. Ask your robotic assistant about installation options, today.
Sonnet for Flesh
Now he is mechanical.
and there ain't any music
on the a.m. dial, so you can
forget all about x-rock eighty
motherfucker, reconciling
yourself instead to
murmurs, utterances
and the urge to catch
one's breath,
trip trip tripingly, or whatever
else
floats through the aether to be
transformed by magnetism.
Continuing his research on robots
because there are plenty of flash
videos
that depict men made
from tin,
he will limit and adjust
his range of motion, accordingly.
Quotations From a Revolution
Thirty years must pass said I,
knowing anyway springtime
could not be properly reckoned
in the rough calculation of
transit. You may visit when
it is convenient. Ah, but remember
to flee spasmodically with the night,
just when the trees flutter and
the birds erupt into their seasonal
songs of temporal location. Until
then, all monuments should be
built from locomotion; a reminder
of what we did to make an
escape from this new rain.
Sonnet for A Passing Vessel
Vast portions of the heavenly void
go unused because performing magic on
carpeted hallways has limitations. Things
are getting lost, and better yet, being revealed;
much like serpentine flashes in the trees,
almost like the time they found a poisonous spider
behind the water cooler. My dreams do not refer to literature.
They do not echo my father’s Quixotic asides.
Or describe everything as backwards. Inside that vessel,
Wave forms do not have emotional content and you
can experience purple in all of its glory, although
the soundtrack is forgettable; composed of bright pixels
that are really grains of rice that are really
bones colored like the contour of a cloud.
***
Rudolfo Carrillo is an artist and writer that lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He studied art at the University of New Mexico. He has been a welder and projectionist, but now works as a college instructor. His work has been published in all sorts of places, but mostly on the web and in newspapers. Interact with his site, Infinity Report, when you have some time.
