The true annals of our would-be we continued
unfolding, tonal forage paralleling life on plan-
et Nub. Everything not being alright would be
al-
right we’d left off knowing, gnostic remit we
so opted for. So said The Book of So, we couldn’t
stop reading it, The Book of So said as much...
We
were deep into its back pages, we looked our-
selves up, the we we were on our way to. So
had been so leaned on, only to be leaned on a-
gain, consequent so, temporizing so, moot so,
in-
tensifying so... So said its tissue-thin leaves.
So said its tree-trunk spine, revenant wood, a
caroling, chorusing book, stops out, up from un-
der, a boat from over the sea so what it was. Some
said
of it, “immune to what had been magic, amphi-
bian we thought,” a book above water, a box below
we guessed, new to such arcana, beginners again
we
felt... Morning met us twelve years behind our-
selves. L.A. it now was we were in, Al Jarreau
what time it was, “Midnight Sun” so on the box
we
stood breathless, a cartouche encasing it all it
seemed. There had been getting to be too much to
and fro, too much getting farther away. Having
put
away qualm, having put away disquiet, peace
be upon us we begged, beset by mystical wishes, a
fragility such that peace would not come. Where
the
dead had gone had gone our need to be there, where
the dead had gone had gone our need to know, went
the book’s refrain, the book that would be caroling,
the
book that would be a box... We sang with words
put in our mouths, a hoarse warbling, bird accom-
paniment, it might’ve been Baltimore we were in.
It
might’ve been Upper Egypt we were in, Sheikh
Barrayn inside the book that would be a box. We
were chanting the names of saints before we knew
it,
feathers caught in our throats, chanting the names
of places we’d been, Santa Barbara, San Diego, San
Jose. “We stake our lives on drunken bets all the time,”
the Sheikh had been saying before we broke into song,
a
bent all else accrues to he went on to expound as
we sang... A song of the Andoumboulou it was we
sang, a two-in-one book of so, box and book’s meet-
ing, body and soul. Not since body met soul, we went
to
say, semising, semisay, so of a mind as we were had we
been. Night met us farther on, bird accompaniment
flown from our throats long since, word worn away by
war-
ble, warble pressed flat against the backs of our teeth,
the song’s unsettlement gone. Book nine it now was
and had been all along unbeknown to us, our late syn-
tactic study a kind of swing. Not since body and soul’s
first
meeting had road so run as one with song, song with
road... There was the sense that what we did was all copla,
all ghazal, always in the air, always there to be plucked,
pie-
ces whose whole
we were
•
So much had been said about The Book of So, so
shaky a hold we had on it could we be said to’ve
had hold of it. No time soon would it be still, not
be
the jittery book it’d been, no matter we forever
said soon come. We tossed in our sleep lost in
its pages. Dreaming’s defeat we kept dreaming.
A
strained happiness we read about stalked and
stayed with us, apocalypse taking aim as we dreamt
and kept dreaming, catastrophe whichever way
we
looked... The book was in the house even so, a
stalked, stomped going forth with knees high, vio-
lin chirp taken up, high stepping. The book, some
said,
was what was made of it, a weave and a waver-
ing the book itself said, all preface or prolegom-
enon should we finish, all afterword should we not.
The house itself, it was said, stepped high, bound by
the
book inside it, the book about which talk never end-
ed, so’s having been said an advance on more say,
bound-to-be-said the house we sought out, a boast or a
bri-
gade or both... So much had been said, so much
had been believed or disproved, it fell to us to reflect
on binding, a word we now took note of, a word
we
for days turned over. It was The Book of So’s busi-
ness to be come back to, bound as it was and as we
as well were, carolers of dispatch though we were.
A
treatise on bondage it turned for a time to be, an-
other stolen election under Nub’s belt, the United
Slave States of Nub its name now, nothing if not all
that glittered, nothing if not a whistling bird. Canary
yel-
low was thus the color we chose, Nub’s new nature
its old and new nature, coal dust blackening our
tongues and our throats, a new kind of duende Nub’s
own...
We were living such that so summed everything
up, wished-for, would-be consequence inconsequent,
Nub’s pendular politics back and forth... A Cape
Ver-
dean piano hammered out glee we were shadowed
by, strained happiness we’d read about earlier come
true, only to be had at an angle, music’s umpteenth
re-
move
__________________________
(19.xii.16: insofar-i)
An interrogative so caught me lost in the moment,
a million different ways not there. I kept
arriving by different routes, going nowhere, the
same
where again and again. “Like so,” I said, commending
myself, a backhand slap, so’s minion,
so’s domain I so wound up in… It was the way
it
was in The Book of So, reading run by a wish
to get out, no way out the way it was in The Book
of So. I was the steal-away part, either a book
mark fallen to the floor or a drafted page put away
and
forgotten, given flow by such disposal, pure dis-
patch…The Cape Verdean piano kept at me
no matter. Jorge Humberto was on the box or in
the
book or even both, clubfoot happiness, halt felicity’s
fledg-
ling
run
__________________________
(20.xii.16: tag)
It got to where we were obsessed with The
Book of So, so hung up we thought only of
it. We wanted to be gone or for it to be gone.
We
were living the dream, we were living the
life. Part plaint, part plea, the Cape Verdean pi-
ano was at our backs, an aspect of gallop
threaded in we heard as orishas, an aspect that
would
once have been all clack… Spirit ran thru it
now, none of us anyone in particular it so took
us out, none of us not in the spirit running thru.
We
were wanting to be the real we, we self-medi-
cated, wanting to be the realest we… We wanted the
book to involve us free of entrapment, we wanted
to
write the book more than
read it
__________________________
(21.xii.16: tag)
Everywhere we went everyone talked
about The Book of So, would-be we not
to be caught out, would-be and real, we
were
admonished, were in the same book…
We went to school underwater was what
it was. Hoofbeats hollowed our bones and
we
flew. A drunken run to the sea was what it
was. A submerged run it turned out to be,
hoofbeats underwater exactly where the votes
went,
hoofbeats under the
sea
Nathaniel Mackey is the author of six books of poetry, the most recent of which is Blue Fasa (New Directions, 2015); an ongoing prose work, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, whose fifth and most recent volume is Late Arcade (New Directions, 2017); and two books of criticism, the most recent of which is Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (University of Iowa Press, 2018). He is the editor of the literary magazine Hambone, coeditor, with Art Lange, of the anthology Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993), and coeditor, with Michael Bough, Kent Johnson and others, of the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Dispatches Editions/Spuyten Duyvil, 2017).