Like many writers, I feel centered when I write, or it might be better to say, when I don’t write, when I can’t write for whatever reason, I feel, frankly, de-stabilized. It’s dangerous for me not to write.
Sigrid Nunez
The cop doesn’t want a prayer
He doesn’t want the bodies to stand over the dead animals that wash onto the shore
He doesn’t want to hear the bodies offering love and compassion to their sick friends who rest inertly on the beach
He doesn’t want the so-called healthy bodies standing over the so-called sick bodies and wishing that the sick bodies will recover
He doesn’t want to hear about Jesus or the holy spirit and he doesn’t want anyone to stand or kneel over the sick bodies the state requires him to beat
With his nightstick he beats the so-called sick bodies the so-called healthy bodies who care for the so-called sick bodies
See the healthy bodies walking away from the sick bodies to avoid the blows from the cop who walks behind them on the beach because they have broken a legal code
They have failed to comply with the authoritative bodies’ attempts to order society
according to a set of logical and common ideals
The camera zooms in on the mouth of a healthy body as the police officer strikes his teeth with a nightstick
The healthy body who came to pray for the sick bodies crumbles to the ground
There are black birds flying above there are white birds flying above
There are warblers there are ducks there are hawks and scoters above the police officer who beats the healthy body
There is a small songbird look at its brown back its chestnut cap its bright yellow undertail that is constantly wagging the faint streaks of yellow on its side
There is a sparrow with a plump body with white and brown streaks running across it
The birds witness the police officer beating the healthy and the unhealthy bodies
It is beautiful to fly we sing
It is what the body must always remember
I am on the shores of Lake Michigan
I am lying in my cot with my dog who is panting and coughing and dying from heart failure
I cannot tell an authoritative body anything about my dog’s failing heart or my dog will immediately be euthanized thrown into a body bag and dumped into the middle of the
lake
My dog is a migrant from Puerto Rico
In Puerto Rico he was clubbed by a Puerto Rican police officer for being homeless
He was run over by an imperialistic taxi service
My dog has tropical worms in his heart
Sometimes I pray in my native tongue for his body to rest peacefully
This prayer is an illegal activity
The authoritative bodies have deemed it illegal to pray in another language
Everything the police officer did on the shores of Lake Michigan was legal
It is legal for a police officer to beat a praying body
It is legal for a police officer to beat a peaceful body a brown body a black body a beige body a gray purple healthy or unhealthy body
The courts have upheld the right of a police officer to beat the body of anybody he deems a
threat to public safety
The healthy man praying on the beach for the sick bodies is not actually praying for the sick bodies he is putting a curse on the police officer
He is praying to a god who is a goat or a deer or a bear or a monster says the police officer
Your god is an innards-eating quadruped he says
It’s a mammal but it’s not the right type of mammal
It’s the type of mammal who thinks it can destroy its own shadow
I have the right to beat a body if the body says something that will threaten my life
Words the police officer says are actions
You’re a decrepit public body says the police officer to the man who prays
And your prayers will land you a lifetime in the foamiest hole of our diminishing carcass economy
Daniel Borzutzky’s The Performance of Becoming Human is the winner of the 2016 National Book Award in Poetry. His previous books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy (2015), Data Bodies (2013), and The Ecstasy of Capitulation (2006). He lives in Chicago.
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with John Giorno, Lidia Yuknavitch, Iman Issa, Eric Baudelaire, Ieva Misevičiūtė, Daniel Borzutzky, and more.
Like many writers, I feel centered when I write, or it might be better to say, when I don’t write, when I can’t write for whatever reason, I feel, frankly, de-stabilized. It’s dangerous for me not to write.
Sigrid Nunez