you, your lesson plan — us, by example

two low bookshelves of your diaries & notebooks of observation, arranged in a definition of their own & new chronology, you push them face to face and cover with a bedsheet

and you hold the bedsheet down under your largest glass dish like a basin, like a lake in a crater on the moon, and you fill the dish with hundreds of teeth, clattering, root-long teeth, grown of animals of more species than we know

we watch the teeth, the teeth grin like kaleidoscopes

you clear your throat and then over the teeth you pour ants, from a jar overwhelming ants, until they fill the gaps & cavities, cleave to roots, make themselves to black gums shiny & swarming, and then over the teeth you pour a paste

a paste invisible and thick and rich like mana, like the sand of a desert made of mana, and you place a lid on the dish

we watch

the ants root the paste, the fat cables of themselves pictured in time a tunneled graph, pictured in space an accidental filigree: the ants carry teeth on their backs, stand teeth in structurally significant places, bolster new absences over enameled columns — and this creates astonishing configurations in the teeth

the teeth that grin like kaleidoscopes grin like sharks, like the fruit of spherical jaws, mouths with no openings, mouths against themselves, mouths able to chew themselves alone: the teeth of incompatible animals nest in mosaics and, in a mouth of strange geometries, become the teeth of one comprehensive organism

and this mouth of tectonic plates shifting over ant backs in fault lines, this mouth that chews their world, the raw paste of their world suspended in glass atmosphere, it chews it to bits secreted down their tunnels, down arteries, down a network of blind intestines & of complex incomprehensible digestion

finally you resume our gaze and tell us

this is how you made yourself

we protest but you say

no don't show me anymore

the best and strongest positive emotion i remember for you

for feeling for all of you

is a kind of loving concern

in the form of

abject terror

. . .

every night i wanted to wake you up but i was too afraid to wake you up

because before i could shake you by your sides i would have to say your names

and before i could say your names i would have to admit to having learned of all your names

. . .

when i learn the name belonging to a person it seems that

to the contrary

very many features of the person are implied by the name and that actually the name is an intricate machine for producing the person when written

or said

or thought half-consciously

in idle word games

and i worry what will happen to the name when the person

due to death or unsuccessful memories which are like a death but healthy actually

quits existing

many books can be put underneath the name to bolster the name and to exercise at least some among the rudimentary functions of the name

but won't the name eventually seem to produce only these books?

and won't another name which is more recently arrived replace the name

my life reduced to names

and if i lose my names

i am so worried

and then the new name will produce the person

who will have the wide awake eyes

that open

to find me

probably we should at least feed something

do you think feral cats can taste disappointment

if we feed feral cats on our corpses, do you think it is better to be fit and lean and really healthy meat cut-wise or obese but able to feed 300 percent more feral cats

will feral cats want us to die outdoors or will they enjoy breaking into our apartments for sport

after eating our corpses, will feral cats nap in the sun or in the dark

can feral cats get seasonal affective disorder and require full-spectrum light therapy

if we feed feral cats on our corpses, will they be more or less feral

are feral cats attending community college adult education classes to become objectively less feral

will feral cats actually eat our corpses or will they sell them to medical schools and use the money to buy organic produce and rarer kinds of coffee bean

why don't feral cats write us anymore

will we be unable to relate to feral cats

will feral cats be embarrassed of us around other feral cats but feel really bad about this later; will feral cats complain we are not enough like feral cats even though secretly they dislike other feral cats

will we make feral cats feel guilty and then will feral cats be too sad to eat our corpses

will feral cats feel sad and call our corpses from the phone in their hotel room but then get frustrated with our response and say, i don't even know why i called