Map Literary: A Journal of Contemporary Writing and Art
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        • Stephen Benz, "Night Then Morning: Elko, Nevada"
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      • Art Spring 2014
    • 2012 & 2013
  • Pedagogy

Fall 2013: from the Ark Codex ±0 series

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0:2:4: Dangling antler & eye patches are jury-rigged as a makeshift sleigh & a smoothing function is applied to counter-balance the drainage fallout. Snakes are the very legless traces of matrices used as study guides. There are 5 crayfish subjects (for they qualify only as nerve bundles). The only sound is our own breathing & an occasional deep cough—no pronounced rhythm when you ride the sine wave. Each tangent approaches continuity—yet not enough to strike a nerve, for the second you do the experiment is done.
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0:2:54: With anchor fixed & motion detectors in place, a noticeable sound is demodulated. At a molecular level, bonds in the ice jostle, capitulating the sensation we dub «foundry». Before the ark is even complete, a shipwrecked version graces the label of the christening champagne, portrayed as a mise en abyme clone of itself coiled as a message in a bottle. Unscrolling the sea-stained pages we find that: i. you can only observe that which includes observer (the inclusion paradox) & ii. there’s only before & after (the static non-linearity of time).
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0:3:5: From our p.o.v. there exists hideous progeny sequenced from sockeye salmon, where «sockeye» is a homophonic translation of suk-kegh (sθə́qəy’), meaning «red fish» in the language of the indigenous people before us. Fire engines are an arbitrary lifestyle choice. All of this makes sense knowing the interrogation comes after the fact. No questions asked. All we had to demonstrate was a valid passport with at least 1 blank page. In lieu of a drug test we had our eyes checked (at various depths beneath the ice).
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0:3:32: The results are captured in suspension & published in Field & Stream. The formulas that created this mess are revealed only in its creation. The story becomes theory only after the experiment proves there’s no QED to QA. Until then our harbored doubts will be leafed through & glossed over, revealing 5 holes in the ark’s hive quarter. We adjust our potential accordingly—memes straddling the bowsprit. Reusing the holes to ice-fish (with no bait). We realign our recycling program to reuse unnumbered pages.
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0:5:9: The contingency plan to is climb a beanstalk to a solid-state cloud (the hive). The shearing water beneath excites the ice matrix, inducing the corresponding signs to fluoresce, if only for a split second. Next of kin keep the pokers firing red. Each of these designs is then branded on the analogous animal, according to tide tables. Carnivores need follow imposed semaphores whilst ruminants casually chew cud. Those resisting domestication kneel in the snow to get at the lichen. From here on out we are in a holding pattern.
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0:2:5: Here is the initial δesign for the dwelling structure, harking back to the π-hole (laid out in 2-δ—see also «kernel retraces»). Foreign anti-bodies are intentionally introduced to generalize & give structure to the coding matrix that would otherwise crumble on translation. Anti-bodies are ingested via raw jellyfish netted from beneath the ice. Once digested they replicate their structure in a «staring hive», with each cell able to replicate the whole. Each verse is able to stand for the sentencing & each sentence comes down to a «vverdb».
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0:2:55: The champagne bottle splinters & shatters off the barnacled bow. Artesian bubbles spume & sublimate to soiled snow, surrendering to the sound of biological clocks ticking & a doppler-shifted laugh track. Despite the siren, there are no accidents. A self-destruct gene is built in by design, as a last resort. Before that, though, we will cannibalize our cargo. It’s a hypocrisy we are all born into. A tree is planted in the mast’s stead, capped with a crow’s nest. When the quill touches shell, the egg self-medicates the ark id unto itself.
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0:3:6: Our retinal reins are 1st detached (where 1st come, last served). There is only 1 hole punched for the i/o feed (in such darkness we can only read what we write as we are writing it). Each navel has roots in the ark. A common thread is a tendered rearrangement. A fact-based approach issues forth from fallopian tendrils without issue. We sleep (within sleep) in the facing room beyond the retaining wall... until a dental hygienist taps on the glazed aquarium ice, waking us up. Apparently we need to file our teeth to keep fear at bay.
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0:3:33: Our evolutionary analysis of parrotfish is ever evolving. In the absence of reliable reefs, she (this numerated page is during an initial phase of her sequential hermaphroditism) audibly rasps the ice beneath the ark with her obscene beak. She tells us what she wants to eat (raw char) but she can’t be trusted to speak of her own habits. Everything we know is hearsay. She says she sleeps in a mucus cocoon & can alter her color to mimic other species, but we don’t know if her speaking of this is in itself a form of mimicry.
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0:5:10: The holding pattern is strung together by an unsubstantiated flood of thought, each impulse culled & alt-tagged & arranged as teeth in a «reverse rack & pinion» brace (translating linear motion to rotation around an axis). In this way, migration is encoded on site-specific Y-STRs (Y-chromosome short tandem repeats). The rest of the Y-chromosome does not undergo recombination as population polymorphism originates only from mutation, placing individuals on the same phylogenetic tree as mitochondrial eve).

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Ark Codex ±0 is a book published by Calamari Press.

published by
The Department of English
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
The William Paterson University of New Jersey
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