Uniquely Overblown and with Bombast

We call them transcendental, signified or otherwise. We learn all the myths, grown up on them, sucking them straight from the source:

memory.

Fabricated, as always.

And although I may have learned the difference between Myth and myths and the tenacity and untenability of them all, it doesn’t stop us. We talk about what the Good Book says, and I have to raise a quiet hand and ask why there’s a page missing here.

Narrative elisions, emendations, and all that:

We are the chosen [P]eople of the Book. Can you tell me the difference between being Southern, being southern, and being?

There are all these identities on the border, edging in, leering from the outside, but they jam inside your skull, pushing against any simplified sense of self. And it’s not a unifying myth; we’re not that uncivilized anymore, right? It’s multiplicity. Individuation is so last century. But, no, no, no.

NO!

It’s not a map, a mountain, or variegated topography.
It’s a lake of fire.
And we’re all invited, implicated,
imbricated.