Performance After the End of the World by Talin Tahajian

Performance After the End of the World
Talin Tahajian

Performance After the End of the World
Talin Tahajian
The only piece of advice I’ve got for anyone
is to shout your precious name into the rain
& wait for a response. I’ve never been good
at caring very much about language except
when it matters the most. Look up. The sky
has never seemed bigger. Days when clouds
are so low it’s like the air is a ghost & every
person is a ghost & in a way that’s almost
comforting, bodies aren’t really bodies at all.
When you meet a body or a boy in the street
so long after the light has gone & every star
seems amazing. The sky as an appendage
to a whole other life. Have you ever thought
of the galaxy as something so infinitely big
it’s almost irrelevant. Bodies that whisper
at night like something amazing. Like every
sad poet, I am obsessed with the sky at night.
As if we could ever forget the horned moon
of our ancestors. My language has been called
diaphanous & imprecise. But you can cut into it
with a knife. When I look at a magnificent
white museum with so many dead objects
I can only think of it collapsing into a vicious
ocean. Water will exist long after we do. When
my body exists, I can feel something warm
as water swell up in my chest as if remembering
some primordial dream. We whisper to each
other in the dark as bodies do & the lights
flicker on. This is how electricity works in cities
that haven’t heard voices in thousands of years.
Imagine this planet once the world has grown
through it again. I feel bloodless. I feel like
the dust that created the universe. The earth
as all sea, just like Ovid imagines it. The ocean
as one gorgeous excuse for drowning. I feel
like the water inside of me. I turn to the boy
or body in the street & beg Tell me something
real Tell me something real & from nowhere,
an answer I will take you to it & I will take you
to it & I will take you to it & I will take you to it—