“The true experimenters, it seems to me, are the bugs that fail, that die 6 times a summer, 450 times in a normal human life, that are mutant and nondurable, that are the repositories of anthropogenic forces.”
— Joyelle McSweeney, The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults
worn with the mnemonic sensation
of a weathered beetle’s precious metal
call it a resurrection strategy
something to be proudly worn into Heaven
memory after memory
we bleed only to catch the time
autocatalytic degradation
another neckline frozen in time
halted orbit of another ring another swarm
around another exclamatory skull: Poet
brass-pressed gem bugging
in-out without thoughts of out-
living history’s cellulose acetate
usual thoughts of the Plastic Age
metallic green egg-like elongate-ovate
with a bluish cast conspicuously
no idea how us bugs have managed
to keep up appearances (all these years)
undersurface years, beaten from
the foliage of Buckeye, from the great Ragweed
tiny claws dentating near the apex, after Buttonbush
(or was it button-push?)
swept and sifted into material properties
governed from a Dome, yes: another capital-D Dome
from everything that could ever be
possibly found on flowers
you, in this circumstance, wearing a necklace, wearing
everything that could ever be possibly found on flowers
call it a resurrection strategy
something to be proudly worn into Heaven
House of Schiaparelli. Elsa Schiaparelli and Jean Clément. Necklace, autumn/winter 1938-39
Paul Cunningham co-manages Action Books. He is the author of Sociocide at the 24/7 (New Michigan Press, 2025), Fall Garment (Schism Press, 2022), and The House of the Tree of Sores (Schism Press, 2020). Brillo, his next book of poetry, is forthcoming from Lavender Ink / Dialogos in 2025. He is also one of the collaborators in Katrine Øgaard Jensen’s Ancient Algorithms (Sarabande Books, 2025) His translation of Sara Tuss Efrik’s play Danse Macabre Piggies was anthologized in Experimental Writing: A Guidebook and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Cunningham currently manages the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame where he also teaches.