from Report from the Iijima Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
Ode to the Jetstream and her malaise due to climate change
It is indicative of ecological collapse on a global scale—all affecting all.
The eyes are knowing eyes and eyes of storms—the void in the center of a storm. Dislocated eyes. Oculus’ that see reality and are deluded also.
“The seven half-embryos portion out the semen of the
world at Vishnu’s command.”
— The Rig Veda (1.164.36), translated by Wendy
Doniger
Shiniest
of voids, ringing with fields.
A
unitary vigor, tarrying for eons.
Pluck the tension, and particles ding-dong and disappear.
Some
clump and explode,
rainbow
into uterine layers, diaphanous
and thickening—tabs
of
bursting
cartographies.
Plasma
membranes, oceanic feeling circulating
through
straying habitats.
Life
forms mutate, accumulating cultures. Some survive
the
high waters, the freezes,
the
anus of inverse allotments, abutting domains
of
empire:
(. . . Araby shags Katharina, Prabu shanks birth,
Aaron ghosts haughty, Huck drags folks,
Bill tells stories, Julius sucks ore,
Vassily bots hard, Larry cracks jokes,
Darren bathes guns in power and glory. . .)
Lords of riches,
releasing
remote intricate gizmos, repellents,
and
horndog fantasies
into
the loosening and baying expanses.
Who will embrace all
those
odd, incidental creatures
ad
infinitum,
as
they are going, gone? One bug,
diamond-headed,
inky,
with
a cinched oblong body, pinched
at
each end, with the slightest filament for a tail, and round,
sheer
wings.
Lords
of dissolution,
you
will not be consoled: for being so torn
for
missing always
the
teeming void, the book of beginnings,
where
you decaying at every instant. At every instant,
anything
goes: woozy pupae cluster upon splintering genealogies,
spitting
out eccentric yantras with jazzy segments and alarming
high-pitched
whines. Whatever’s
left of that initial,
irradiated substrate
is on high alert, flashing skirts of squalor,
converting over—in and out of—time
into daughters.
Vidhu Aggarwal’s poetry and multimedia practices engage with world-building, video, and graphic media. Their poetry book, The Trouble with Humpadori (2016), imagines a cosmic mythological space for marginalized transnational subjects. Avatara, a chapbook from Portable @Yo-Yo Labs Press, is situated in a post-apocalyptic gaming world where A.I.s play at being gods. They have published in the Poetry, Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix) Journal, and Leonardo, among other journals. In Daughter Isotope (OS 2021), they engage in a “cloud poetics,” as a way of thinking about personal, collective, and digital archives as a collaborative process with comic artists, dancers, and video artists.