JOE MAYERS

from A SNAPSHOT OF THE GLOBAL MARATHON MAN

The snapshot of the Global Marathon Man is the product of the Polaroid’s internal developing processes and, so, might be considered a thing contained; this, too, to say nothing of all that the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held by.

I first shit myself running in an old gold settlement whose name I can’t say: Otrozhnny.

Silver compounds with three layers of sensitivity, to blue to green to red from top to bottom atop a basic plastic-filmic base, right here; the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held by variously-sized manila envelopes.

I am a body early in its re-writings of bloodflow and autos and necessity and I shit myself up, first, impossibly.

And, to enable the internal developing processes of the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man, between these trips of image from blue to green to red, dye couplers for lights’ proper clingings, internally, right here; the snapshot of the Global Marathon man has been held in a brand new copying machine, in the smushed coffins of scanners, in the gaze or glow of projectors’ projections, via mirrors and bulbs that make heat. 

The sphincter is a horn on the cusp, always, puckered always to scream my excess at the slightest slipping of the guard and in a fit heralding of its freedom I shit myself first up my spine and in silence, a silence unable to say: Otrozhnny.

Right here, cyan, from the lights of blues, of greens; right here, magenta, lights blue, lights red; right here, reds and greens run yellow; the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held by numerous pairs of clawed hands, most often between the thumb and middle finger at the base, sometimes the thumb and pointer finger, across the signature.

I shit myself up, impossibly, and say nothing and breathe and have shit myself a shadow up the spine of some tail, tale I might have had, a tale whose setting I cannot say.

The image layer. Right here. The timing layer.

In Chokurdakh, I shit myself down my left leg and learn to say it from a line man who says the roads to Chokurdakh, the roads from Chokurdakh, are not year-long roads, that in the winter the roads to and from Chokurdakh are not, and two-hundred steps after I can’t hear the name in my mouth.

Right here.

I shit myself down my leg and do not know the season and the line man says the Indigirka makes the only road from Chokurdakh and that it is not a road but a river and not a river in the winter on the surface but frozen.

The acid layer. Here. Atop cyan and magenta and yellow in waiting, in chemical reaction to be set in motion, to be snapped, to be set off by the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man; the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held in a good few filing cabinets.

And I say all the rivers of Siberia I shit myself near, the three great rivers, the life lines, with ease; the Lena leaps from the tongue in shitting myself down the long line of the long-underweared-leg, past the knee’s crook, Lena asking my mouth two simple, self-same moves to form the easy syllables about its frosted banks as I shit myself into my shoe.

And the reagent’s opacifiers and alkalis in a blob at a corner beneath the image layer; the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held by scotch tape—five pieces, four corners and the center, rolled unto themselves.

The Yenisei I say simply enough, say I, I say the Yenisei cleanly and bare-assed shitting myself into the radioactives of its waters, the short-lived ²⁴Na, ³²P, ⁵⁶Mn, ²³⁹Np, and ⁵¹Cr of its waters, shitting myself about its ever-greens.

A crude chemical blob held, right here, that the snapping of the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man runs flat and even atop a surface for proper seepings, up and down. 

And the Ob, a basic bulb of a word that bobs out my mouth by accident if I leave it open long enough, I say the river with each step for a stretch and shit myself in a rhythm that tosses echo about the Ob’s ice’s all but silent shifts and shit myself full round to the front so that this self I’ve shit seems to precede me for a bit, tickles about the belly and past the brim of the pants, past the brim of each stride and on toward the next I shit myself and say the Ob that I run along without intention, jaws agog in jogging the globe.     

A blob run flat and even for the reagent’s precise pourings, a particular cascading, down the light sensitive and dye developer layers, and, here, exposed particles slip to silver, to metallic in the snapshot’s marking of so much real, right here, in its making artifact; the snapshot of the Global Marathon Man has been held by a wooden frame, an iron frame, a clean-looking, molded frame composed of slate gray polyurethane, among others.

But it’s a sort of silence that sticks to those towns or villages or rural localities along those rivers I say with such ease in shitting myself, in marking myself where I am in such loss, and a river hardly stands up as setting in scenes already so set in motion. 

Joe Mayers is a PhD student in literature and creative writing at the University of Utah where he works as managing editor of Western Humanities Review. His work appears or is forthcoming in Alice Blue Review, Juked, decomP, and Heavy Feather Review.