You crush the beetle's paper skin, packing tape pupae skipping a stone across adulthood's back its insides not a pond, but slime mold shaped like organs The Beatles made hit records; this beetle makes nothing but shells, shade in the desert, and locust swarm Bedouin morning begats teeth like stone pillars of Silk Road marketplace You can make all sorts of things out of beetle skins: Tiffany lamps, diaphanous curtains, gilded dinnerware, papyrus scrolls, pulverized ruby mascara, manometric gauges, leather purses, wooden spoons, twine, ink, quills, and nibs, you leave all these unmade, no wares at the market, morning comes The Bedouins mount hooved creatures with dragonfly legs, spindly and opalescent like glass in a tchotchke shop on high street take to the sky and let out their turbans, passing silk-scarved ingénues on the Champs-Élysées who mind their own business You look up and anarchic path of Brooklyn's first firefly, there Bedouins descend, assemble water pipes and lay out carpets and pillows; you put on the kettle for mint tea, sip the bitter concoction called Physarum globuliferum in Arabic, in time the butterfly nets Would you like me to put on a record, you ask the Bedouins any requests? Shake the nets, they say until tent glows with insect chemicals Toss scarabs onto a turntable, they say to scratch out a song |
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