Daryl Clark

I. In Italy, (for Beatrice; after Borges)
II. The Liner Notes/Enter Beatrice
III. About Daryl

In Italy,
(for Beatrice; after Borges)

They pipe-in pop music.
Fundamental chords
reverberate off the columns.

This song is seldom played on the radio.

My future,
etched in,
money and marble,

running toward the foyer
(experiencing a slight helicopter sensation
while doing so).

An image of cypresses
an actual cypress tree in the foreground.

California was America’s fantasy
just like Italy was...

Of course, we were disappointed.
You can only fill a space
with so much sunshine,
highway,
silicone

before you have to empty it out
fill it with something else.

In America,

those were
horse and buggy times:

we lived among
alternate endings.

The corpses of dead automobiles
bleeding fluid and shedding rust
all over the sidewalks.

It’s a wonder
we ever made it home.

The Liner Notes/Enter Beatrice

I’ve been trying
to dislocate this area,
characterized by delicate anxiety.

A boy scattered over a landscape.
The phone is not silent.
The radio is present,
the desk and obstacle are not.

All the adults are out,
broken down in their automobiles,
laying on the horns with their faces.

How we could use
an “adult” figure right about now:
on the television,
radio,
phone.

This happens
every four thousand years or so,
when one of the great cities dies,
spits asbestos and mortar in your ear.

Under such conditions,
the benevolent dictator
will understand
that he doesn’t hold power
over rulers of other dominions.

I cannot make these realities
more
or less true.

My god doesn’t exist,
while yours sits on a throne somewhere
and sounds off like she’s got a pair.

There’s a reason
your name doesn’t appear in the liner notes:
this isn’t about America;
the hollowed husk of America.

I,
for one,
have grown weary
of playing these sad songs on the radio:
“Are you beautiful in Kazakhstan?”
“Are you beautiful, holding your boyfriend’s hand?”

She moved between
the town and myself.
I have since replaced her.
I have since replaced the town and myself.

Daryl Clark is a clerk living in Brooklyn. He is also the fiction editor of Red China.