Codex Exterminarius

Kim Goldberg

eelgrass rock me in your sonatA=Tempo arms, shield my translucent
body with your soft rabbiT=Avalanche, hide the twisted
concrete upwell of each civiC=Galaxy from my bowling ball eyes just a   
little while longer, let’s join a touareG=Caravan in the sahara
you can be my piloT=Astro guide into the mysteries
above while we escorT=Armada of pulsing moon jellies across
stranded skies until they exhale a novA=Tracer to light our journey home
teach me your cobalT=Axiom, your throat sung
equation to wake the cobrA=Tempest that will hurl us
back to that thundering mustanG=Century drenched in hoofbeats 
and whipsheet manes, tails, lariaT=Allure (I can feel their hot breath on my 
gelatinous skin, lofting me atop a sequoiA=Titan) this sharp loss
of altitude, I watch a luminA=Thunderbird archangel dim while 
whisps of cloud (the spiriT=Avenger) escape from its pale nostrils…
whose sickly plunge into this crownviC=Genesis moss trough is next?
goshawk rock me in your omegA=Talon grip, shield my translucent body

until the end

The Science

‘Codex Exterminarius’ is a mapping of our cultural genome in an age of post-peak oil. Each pair of conjoined words at the centre of every line is car model names. The bonding letters conform to the molecular structure of DNA by replicating the Adenine-Thymine (A-T) and Guanine-Cytosine (G-C) base pairs that cement the double helix. Every genetic code is a narrative assembly preconfiguring a developmental trajectory. The trajectory of this cultural genome would appear to open with idyllic bliss (“sonatA=Tempo”) and conclude with apocalypse (“omegA=Talon”). The setting for the poem is the Nanaimo River Estuary on Vancouver Island, where young salmon (smolts) with their large black eyes hide in the eelgrass before going out to sea. In Nanaimo Harbour beyond the estuary freighters stacked high with new cars from Europe (via the Panama Canal) are anchored before unloading. Despite car-makers naming so many models after animals, that will not forestall the mass extinction our cultural genome appears to be hurtling us toward.

The Poet

Kim Goldberg is the author of eight books of poetry and nonfiction. Her most recent is Devolution, poems and fables of ecopocalypse (Caitlin Press, 2020). In a former life she was an environmental journalist. And earlier still, a biology graduate from University of Oregon. She lives on Vancouver Island where she has been known to stage pop-up poetry events in underpasses, parks and weedy waysides. Twitter: @KimPigSquash.

Next poem: Cosmological Distance Ladder by Greg Hill