‘Transmigration’ by Daniel LaBeau

    

    

When you wave behind the reporter

to get on the news,

you’re part of channel 7’s evening missive,

uneven parts dress, skin, shoes.

You send letters to yourself,

send yourself in letters

that collect in colorized pools

on our personal screen.

Closed in here, girl,

behind drapes, behind hints

of window and sun,

where we take up our heads

to see, with every sense

working at once,

it’s all you can do to laugh,

to collide with yourself

when you forget which houses

are yours.  You’re pictured

like this, this: under

traffic signals, light sprayed

across your hair, a red

giant condensing, defining

sweetly on the TV

5:07 p.m.  I see

you like I’d see a killer,

a president, a pedestrian

body of colors

which survive each other,

performance folded to

tape.  This is surely forever,

this will make you.

Make you last longer

than yourself, what you want

and I can’t give you.

I remember, you told me

about a church where a vial

of powdered blood from

a dead saint is kept.

You said every Easter

the blood liquefies, the seats

are full, everyone there

to see time disappear

into slow movement

and miracle.

We could shoot up

this blood, girl,

make ourselves

permanent in this world,

dig ourselves up one day

a year to smile for the cameras.

Our braided veins collapse

under spotlight,

get the shakes and hold hands,

punching at our pictures,

souls shaken into frame,

framing our angles, curves,

horizons.  There’s television

in our pasts, swallowing our childhoods,

hiding inside every memory,

television that runs all

through us, we can

make the stations change,

girl, feel them change,

in our hands, our hands,

supernovas.

We’ll prepare ourselves

with pancake make-up,

with hairspray, our costumes

modeled on dummies,

we’ll believe our lines

like we thought them

on our own, we’ll know

ourselves exactly, when

we become television.

It’s a show

where we’re created,

where stars explode in our living room

and we watch them hanging there

on strings, lifeless,

slow boiling, a space

where our faces

are sleeping before we are.

(published in Persona, 1992)