ABSTRACT
I attend a theatre for the end of the world. Built for nuclear hits. In the subterranean dark. Like fish, stripped, of arms: mined of salvageable metals. Who, like Ozymandias, slips into a theatre. A war room, underground. Inside this labyrinth: a hidden theatre. Unused. Abandoned. The theatre of war in an unseen above. Screens. Everywhere. In these wings, only generals. Maps shift: a burning of worlds. News, hung with magnets, slid into place. In the sightless dark, I stop. Aghast. “It is for the end of the world. They built this theatre for the end of the world!” My flashlight plays over the dark real. Seats. Tables for operators. Chthonic switchboards. Nightmare pins & cables. More buttons: your call. Just silence. Just this woods. Unsuspecting. A drill, a rehearsal: hands grazing over cold glass. Yet more chill, in this dark. A sign, a book, a book! Full of rules. All possible subjects, all theatres—all but this imagined theatre of all endings. Everything, the history, “from the chaos and birth of the world to the reign of X.” Dawn, to perform. Stumbling through morning, the rift of it. More clouds. Power rising. On this mimic horizon, a sun flutters, a ping pong ball at the end of a clear line, flashing like a fishing lure: a repertoire of bubbles. Trajectories flaring. (Round again.) Breaking surface. (Round again.) I imagine a halo of atmospheres—a cosmic body etched in movement, an arc of destruction. Lucrative of course. (Again.) (Again.) (Again.) Dreams. Hiccups. An in-dwelling of gods. It’s a hit! A palpable hit! Watch from these seats now. Here, an eye opens. A fantasy, of course. Hear, whole notes. Singing voices, come to rest. Birth! Then? What? That dark mouth (red again). World eater. Pinned by light. Center stage. A dance of galaxies: a tremble of bombs. Open this, then, in the valley of shadow—but not yet in death. This sunken theatre, this recent ruin, in which we clamber.
