"The Truth About Alaskan Air," "The Truth About Structuralism," and "The Truth About Return"

The Truth About Alaskan Air

With thanks to James Brown, Michael Dickman, and Ryan Walsh

you’re a sex machine
 
a brand-new bag
 
the hardest working man in the breathing industry
 
every time you flex a muscle an earth quakes
 
jet across the stage on one foot
 
            it’s a breeze

salmon air
halibut air
grisly air
deer breath
 
you will spawn
 
you’ll feel good like you knew you would
 
igloos make you hot
 
no need for air conditioning or Xanax
 
your will to power    really   a war on your will
 
please please please please
baby don’t go

The Truth About Structuralism

Who was it? Bernard-Henri Lévy​
or Claud Levi-Strauss
who invented structuralism?
 
Does it make any difference?
If signifiers slide around indefinitely,
become so slippery that the signified
is obscured like a woodchuck
inside a woodpile, then
one Levy is just as good
as another Levi.
 
What’s a little méconnaissance among friends?
 
Take, for example, birdfeeders.
Everyone knows that birdfeeders​
are squirrel feeders.
Feathery signifiers fly
along metonymic skyways, fade
into faux-rodent metaphors
that decimate birdseed
which is also squirrel seed—
like a penis which, Lacan insisted,
may be a fleshy protuberance
but not destiny. Turns out,
Freud’s a metaphor for Lacan​
who insisted that a phallus is forever!
 
A phallus is a penis is a bullet is a cigar is a rocket is a casket that penetrates a grave, is a chrysalis that births a moth, a butterfly, a centipede, or a power broker on Wall Street, and on and on...
 
That’s the point, so to speak.
 
A little écrit goes a long way!

The Truth About Return

I don’t have to go back to where I came from because
I’m a white man. What a relief!
 
I’d hate to have to return to a country stolen from
the people who first lived there,
 
a country built on the sweat of slaves, a nation that continually
manufactures reasons to go to war,
 
or where a white lady spit in the face of a black friend who wanted to drink
from the same water fountain as she—how her spittle, like white lava,
trickled down over the decorations on his US Airforce Uniform.
 
I’d hate to go back to a place where disagreement with the government
is met by chants of love it or leave it,
 
or a place where ersatz storm troopers march with torches shouting
Jews will not replace us, or where the leader avers that Nazi
sympathizers are good people.
 
I’d hate to be shipped off to a land run by a tiny group with lots of money
and guns, where attending a movie, or school, or a concert
is a fear-ridden, anxious, ordeal.
 
I carry my white privilege everywhere I go and, like the actress
in the old joke who sleeps with the producers, directors, even
screenwriters to get the part only to be repeatedly injured once
filming begins, my question is:
 
Whom do I have to fuck to get out of this movie?