Lake Michigan, Scene 11

The authoritative bodies play a game with the prisoners

It’s called “You’re Dead!”

When they play this game they speak in a voice appropriate for children or animals

Here is a body they imported from Guadalajara

Look how good it is at not moving

Here is a body they imported from Guatemala

Look how good it is at not moving

Here is a body they imported from Vietnam

Look how good it is at not moving

Here is a body they imported from the Avondale neighborhood on the northwest side of
Chicago

Look how good it is at not moving

Here is a body they imported from Humboldt Park

Here is a body from Englewood       from La Villita       from Back of the Yards       Auburn       Gresham       Garfield Park

Pretend you are like pieces of candy       shout the police officers to the bodies they force to play dead

Pretend you are like pieces of fruit

Pretend you are yellow and orange and red and purple

Pretend you are grape and cherry and lemon and watermelon

Don’t move motherfuckers       say the authoritative bodies       as if they were talking to the cutest of babies or kittens

Don’t move or we will bite your candy ass heads off

You are dead now and you don’t have hands       say the authoritative bodies to the prisoners

You are dead now and this beach is your mass grave

And we will toss you into tonight’s bonfire and you will be twigs

And you will burn for us

And you will nourish the flames

So don’t move

Because if you move then we will have to acknowledge that you are rats

You are mating rats

You are copulating little rats       say the authoritative bodies in their sweet cute baby voices

Silence

The police officers and their superiors do not speak

They walk through the maze of dead-playing bodies

They prod the dead-playing bodies with long sticks

They prod the dead-playing bodies with their leather boots

When the dead-playing bodies are prodded they are not to move       they are to continue to play dead

Because if they move then the authoritative bodies will have to acknowledge the difference between the dead and the living

Because if they move the authoritative bodies will be commanded to toss them into the lake

Because if they move the authoritative bodies will be commanded to unzip their pants and piss
on the prisoners while singing “God Bless the Child” in the sweetest of voices

Is this enough?

Have you had enough of this game?

The police officers break the silence with these questions but they are less than rhetorical

They are scripted

The police officers wait for a response that does not come

They try to suppress their breath on the beach

The prisoners also have instructions

Imagine the snow is melting in the fatty substance in the cavities of your bones

Imagine there is an endless thread of melted wax being sewn through your cheek

Imagine your body is a dreadful roll of flesh that can be balled up and tossed like a piece of
dried nasal mucus behind the endless bed that is this beach

The prisoners play “You’re Dead!” on the beach for several hours

The police officers are instructed to play music

Here is Chet Baker singing “Everything Happens to Me”

Here are the police officers singing along with the music

“I make a date for golf and you can bet your life it rains

I try to throw a party and the guy upstairs complains

I guess I’ll go through life just catching colds and missing trains

Everything Happens to Me”

The prisoners listen to the trumpet solo as they are kicked and spat on and spoken to in the cutest of voices

The prisoners play “You’re Dead!” for several hours

They do not know when the game will end

They do not know if they will ever be able to move

Everything happens to me

 
Daniel Borzutzky

Daniel Borzutzky's poetry collection Lake Michigan is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Borzutzky won the 2016 National Book Award in Poetry for The Performance of Becoming Human. His other books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Memories of my Overdevelopment, and The Book of Interfering Bodies. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto's Valdivia won the 2017 National Translation Award. He has also translated Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks and Song for His Disappeared Love, and Jaime Luis Huenún’s Port Trakl (2008). His work has been supported by the Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pen/Heim Translation Fund. He lives in Chicago.

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Lake Michigan, Scene 9

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Poem with a Rat in It