PANEL #24

                                            Maybe something happened—      fear           apparati
                                            Driving,     the contrails became traces           of missiles
                                            fired w/o my knowledge,   else a bomb           of my
                                            words       I’m precluded or deluded to           not knowing
                                            moments of my own poison?     Unfor-           tanately
                                            the news seemed to get worse   &    worse
                                             [...] So it’s lucky I came home              &
                                            Last summer was our      last summer              even
                                            though neither of us  know that when              we are living
                                            on a mesa then    ,if only briefly, to be
                                            Even after I accused you         how you
                                            made your child     only to take care of              you—
                                            Stepping off the ferry  @  Rock Island
                                            I found my skull in the sand  &   mud
                                            and painted its teeth    with my blood

PANEL #25

I know you will have pain [then]
So I burn The soles of my feet &
listen to music from him [then]
So you say I am tortured with the shocks
So I’ll be Tortured w/ you even as
I am in our little apartment which [is]
a townhouse which is more than little
It does not really matter but that rn
I don't really want to write this down
& it looks different The way I record [it]
Little choruses whoop Girl sounds
& Boy sounds combining in chorus
It’s a melody It is the song from him [then]
It’s sex and worship and it is music
every painful memory as an intrusive thought [so that]
What I need to start is only [the table

PANEL #26

GLASS & METAL— they’ll change the task
or a spiral Outpacing my abilities
To record: Open carry The pads
Now, there’s pages everywhere —a
whole mess I don’t have the time to
Organize this mess) I think I know
what you think—In silence [ ]
Unanswering, which has become yr
forgetting Monastic before suddenly
In love Sewing fabric In distress
Good morning /No/Yes I’m still in bed/
I hear they want to democratize death
everywhere little bodies dropping in th -e next wave not exclusive to the gains
of an individual land, and pre-empti -ing by strange force of society, “good
will of man” &c &c and charity/ It is
all very serious fun.

PANEL #30

From: sticks & wood rings to baskets & (folded) butyl rubber balls
we’ve hooped thru history at our hips
Little black box w/ music inside it—
this is a different machine than— This is a house
These songs include ribbons or ribb- on them-
selves the way they repeat themselves
& repetitions into life is music then timeline
to make a chronology out of the bitt- erness of memories?
1st music is the guttural sound is the utterance
you made before entering in life is the words
you falsely gave Mama is the language
Before our language Is the hoop rolling then a wooden (1)
or is it your game? Is it basketball
then or a past dance? On a bed born
out of Illinois & not an album—
ether Ethan either

Thom Eichelberger-Young is an artist, mental health caregiver, and PhD student in the poetics program at SUNY Buffalo. Their first book is BESPOKE (Saint Andrews University Press, 2019), and their third is ANTIKYTHERA (Antiphony Press, October 2024). Their interviews, poetry, and essays have appeared in venues such as Cold Mountain Review, Bombay Gin, Mantis, Belladonna Collaborative's GERMINATIONS, and American Chordata. Thom also founded and edits Blue Bag Press, which publishes chapbooks of innovative writing. They live in Buffalo, New York, with their husband, Luke, and cats and dog.