Martin Wagner et al., Microplastics in Sediment from the Rhine, 2014
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The flight attendant holds up a transparent plastic bag.
Inside it, ice cubes—themselves like transparent plastic
bags, since inside them they carry
microplastics. Microplastics like ice cubes in this
extended metaphor. The brain reached inside itself and withdrew
microplastics. It thinks about Rome,
their armies of short men they sent clamoring naked
across the battlefield, slinging stones and being mocked
by everyone. Maybe they were like ice
too. Maybe they were never noticed until they stood eye to eye
with a citizen whose height was above average for the village.
How no one knew then
what microplastics would be. How could they have known?
Their empire used two currencies—one with Apollo for the senate
and one with Jesus for the army.
I was flying across the country to sit in a corrugated building and be
taught about Jesus rising from the dead and how we could too.
A man leaned close enough to kiss
me as he told me about preachers and his penchant for Jew jokes.
I thought the best Jew joke in history is that Jesus was Jewish
but transitioned into a boy-god
who sanctified the bureaucracy inherent in empire. Before
this, the man mistranslated Hebrew, lo devar, which actually means
no word, metaphorically, indescribable.
Like the coins of Rome, the differences as they changed hands
inessential to the value they had, because they were the same
metals. This commonality connecting
each house to its neighbor like plumbing, which was famously
lead. Emperors drunk on an element likely inside
every body—like our microplastics
revving the brain's snow until it is ice
cold and the body translucent. A thin cloth
bag stuffed with plastic, stuffed with bags.