from “Dauerwunder, a brief record of facts”

If I grew out of your (winter,  

thought, purse, chest cavity) 

would I, I would be plant-wise 

wiser for the spiny-edge & milk  

veins, this wonder’s so ancient  

so Mesopotamian, look at Miriam  

who covers her mouth when she  

laughs, look at Miriam who wears  

her dress like a casket 
 

                                                          م
 

You have to use the telepathy machine: feelings as artifacts 

You have to use a channel (O) for an ancestor to pass through  

Yawn her up from the white space, in alphanumeric names  

their cambered arabic numerals, a semitic pneumatic, a numen:  

telepathy, yelling over the sea / machines, their quarrel, quarrel 
 

                                                          م
 

/tɛləpæθi/: farflung feeling 
 

                                                          م
 

emerge (trans., imp.): emerge the _________ out of the _________

information                         miracle                             sleep

sound                                    burning car                     throat

child                                      music                                possibility

                                                          م
 

Hippocampus  controls short &  long memory,  named horse +

sea-monster  or  seahorse for its shape,  though  the  man who

described the anatomy first called it a silkworm, then changed

his  mind.  The  silkworm  eats  of  the  mulberry  leaves.  From

holes  in   its  jaws   the   silkworm  excretes  thread  in  circular

movements,  whirl-a-world, self-cocooning.  In  this  video,  the

brain lights up where a new memory forms.

                                                          م
 

Telepathy Machine:                May lamb gone 

of its soft guts,                its life-force charged  

               into red communication: 

               —you have to use your farthest voice 

               —the world is such a _______ place 

Copyright © 2022 by Carolina Ebeid. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 11, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“I have a long note in my Notes app called ‘Dauerwunder’ that I have been adding to for about three years. These fragments come out of that note, which records thoughts about the human brain, weather, mourning, technology, dreams, etymology, etcetera. I found the word through the work of medievalist scholar Caroline Walker Bynum; at its root, dauerwunder means ‘ongoing-wonder’ or ‘enduring-miracle.’ In addition, as someone who has been working with family artifacts and documents, I’m moved by the idea that old objects can become telepathy machines, that a box of surplus passport photos can hold a telepathic charge transmitted by touch. Also, these sections are marked with the Arabic letter for ‘m.’”
—Carolina Ebeid