6.9
(Infantry Patrols: Attacking Houses)
Darkness is hard to control
it makes too much noise
barking at Venus
at churches and their corneas
of fired glass
better to let the lead
fulfill its rapturous purpose
6.4
(Infantry Patrols: Feeding the Personnel)
The cure for melancholy is a good tussle.
The cure for a rattlesnake bite
is a bell in an unfamiliar country.
Doubt must be carried, aggression replenished.
The cure for democracy is feelings.
The irrational can’t be treated by the scientific method;
a man will bleed profusely
if pricked by an idea:
the forest bleeds with him.
1.4
(Introduction: Relationship with the State Department)
they calculate parallax
cheek weld
scope shadow
adjust for cant
cosine indicators
recoil
watch for trace
and windage
when they were born
to solve
the
great
machinery of
nature
CHRIS SANTIAGO is the author of Tula, winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, selected by A. Van Jordan. His second collection Small Wars Manual is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in April. His poems, fiction, and criticism have appeared in FIELD, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and the Asian American Literary Review. He holds degrees in creative writing and music from Oberlin College and received his PhD in English from the University of Southern California. The recipient of fellowships from Kundiman the Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment of the Arts, Santiago teaches literature, sound culture, and creative writing at the California Institute of the Arts. He lives in Pasadena.
YURI TAKASUGI SANTIAGO is a graphic designer, typographer, and artist based in LA.
