Some people’s brains want other people to take off from a stage and fly at any mention of the names that those brains think belong to them. Some people’s brains think it’s still possible to disappear forever in another country. Some people’s brains think that the right things should stand up and kick the wrong things out of the room. Some people’s brains think hey, it’s time for a blackberry banana muffin. Some people’s brains think something should be stuffed up everything. Some people’s brains long for leisurely intimate encounters with people assigned to the diplomatic corps of a faraway nation. Some people’s brains think about stairs.
Brain, brain, why do you always fly away into every corner you can conceive of in the known and unknown?
Some brains think sometimes about living in some other person’s past.
One doesn’t have to do anything at all to have a brain and yet using it, one might think it’s harder to use it than to jump from a platform onto a speeding train.
Some brains know that trains are going to be mentioned sooner or later.
One cell meets another cell and then the cells continue.
Stop that, brain, I want to get off, a brain thinks.
There really is no end to it.
Mark Wallace lives in San Diego, where since 2005 he has been working on a multi-part long poem exploring the psychogeography of southern California, The End of America, sections of which have been published in a number of journals and books and chapbooks, most recently The End of America 8 (Glovebox Books, 2023). He is the author of many other books of poetry, including Notes from the Center on Public Policy (2014) and Felonies of Illusion (2008), as well as several books of fiction, including the novels Crab (2017) and The Quarry and the Lot (2011).