HERACLEOCENE

research poem about Sosnowski's hogweed, dacha and hope

Once at the dacha, when we were little, my friends and I were told a story about children who played with a plant, imagining that its stem was binoculars or a telescope, and burned their eyes. This is how I learned about hogweed. That same year, in one of the Russian language textbooks for elementary school, our class read a short text called “Cow parsnip.” The author praised the beneficial properties of the plant, and also suggested making a small pipe out of the stem, which at the end of the game he advised not to throw away, but to eat - after all, hogweed is “crispy, like a cucumber.” I couldn’t find this story in 2024, but I definitely remember how outraged I was by the whole text, and especially by the comparison of hogweed with a cucumber. I didn’t know that there were other safe species, such as Siberian hogweed, which was probably mentioned in “Native Speech”. I was outraged, because our dacha was dotted with Sosnovsky's hogweed. Described in the 1940s and named by Ida Mandenova in honor of her teacher, it was plucked from the ecosystem of the Caucasus, in which it had its place, and moved to the fields of agrobiological experiments. It was supposed to help overcome the post-war famine: the silage was supposed to feed the cattle, the cattle - the people, and the people - the totalitarian machine. But the hogweed escaped. Having entered into a cruel collaboration with the sun, he discovered the ability to burn our mucous membranes, skin, and tongue. I thought a lot about Sosnovsky's hogweed, about how it, which did not bother anyone in its original range, began to destroy ecosystems and seize territories. I thought about how, as the Earth warms, coral reefs fade, and hogweed moves on, blossoming into boring umbrellas. About the fact that, having once become a victim of an unsuccessful experiment, it is now forever an inflorescence of colonialism, militarism, scientific ignorance, patriarchy, toxicity and uniformity of forms. I decided to imagine what the planet would look like when the dominance of hogweed is established. I called this era Heracleocene (or Hogweed). But I also decided not to give up hope. She is not given much space, but for me she is the most important thing that happens in this poem; she is what I was looking for this language for.

The poem is being republished after it was forced to be removed from the site of its first publication.

lessons from the earth

under fire

from under the counter

from under the floor

from under the tomb

authoritarian regimes

totalitarian regimes

from under the mycelium

actor-network theory

from under the oil artery

(it's not a pipe)

from under the corpse poison of organic tongues

from under the garbage; garbage

but also simply: a handful of earth

on a piece of land

on the ground

weans you from translating speech

▪︎

children looking at a cloud through a telescope

at the telescope - furanocoumarins

Don't play, children, with furanocoumarins

do not swallow magnifying devices

time has mutated into a burn

children play with a dent in their mouth

with fire on the tongue

▪︎

I turned my gaze around the stem

and saw red air

memory unfolded in the red air

tastes like bitter milk

to the touch - burning

the field is engulfed in smoke and confusion

I keep pulling myself along it

I am what point in space?

▪︎

we keep going

let's continue

on the right hand the war is hot

the one on the left is also hot

but a slow war

colonies of faded caps

roots

biting into states

glory glory

o hogweed

animals

bend over

lower

bow to the post-history vagina

▪︎

escape

from laboratories of agrobiological failure

to soil archives

take over ecosystems

move in

in abandoned six acres

escape

from lower agency

to the lever of empire

from water

to the ode

singing

the impossibility of death by totalitarian yeast

▪︎

when I was fifteen I could swim across an entire river underwater, I first went ankle-deep, then waist-deep, then chest-deep, swallowed air and swam across the river underwater, adults joked that I grew gills every night, and I joked that in the morning arms grew by the river and clasping her wrists with my hands, I wished that she would be my home, cold peat in places, funnel-shaped with protruding stumps snags into crumbs ground white sand with the corpse of a neighbor who got drunk and jumped into a fire of icy water with the body of a madman pretending to be a corpse and floating on his back the whole river, scaring the members and members of the garden partnership sea buckthorn members and members respected at: dacha: you please accept me into your Soviet body I will teach you to thoroughly wash your slimy gills I will teach you to swim past dead and not think about anything

▪︎

biodegradable rain propaganda flyers:

activists and activists

anti-hogweed: plants of all areas

fly over and unite into a single body of struggle

for our and your freedom of growth

for the bioqueer revolution

in the name of the fury of adverbs

all rivers and lakes and seas and puddles

in the land of puddles and queues

and beyond

be fertilized and cheerful

Dear representatives of flora and fauna

citizens of the meadow and forest

algae and lichens

stones and rocks

dear living ones!

▪︎

bogged down in a hot hogweed stew

babies spit up sores

feel the umbrella cradle with blisters

sway in the smoky breath of the north

I lick the ashes from their sight with my tongue

but my tongue is also burned

maybe always already burned

and always soaped

another layer of ash and another layer of ash adheres to the ashes and

▪︎

when I was ten, I was strictly ordered not to collect a bouquet of Soviet mistakes, soldiers who did not believe in genetics, post-war laboratories who were fucked up and did not notice the dominant gene of hogweed poison because these words - “dominant”, “gene” - do not translate into the language of their faith, the only one they memorized that they were taught

▪︎

tongues of coral reefs

they were looking for some coolness

at the depth of difference

but their tongues were cut off

Then

yes and every time

cut ali cut ali

no matter how many women ✺ you sew the same tongues

they still faded on land

you can't hear anything about it anymore

on high waves of alien speech

you won't catch any breath anymore

in the illegal settlements of the compulsive white

▪︎

when I was minus fifty just don’t tell me oh just don’t tell me that I wasn’t there then when I was minus forty-nine years old Frankenstalin came said hello I have revenge for your area a comrade came trudged along frankly speaking it was not American cold revenge at all, but grandfather was the leader of our puddles and cheated and when I was minus one hundred degrees according to the mercury calendar comrade Vavilov came with a kiss blushing from Lysenko a comrade colleague and a man with a big one on the crown of his head burning came with a kiss said frankly speaking genetics this is rotten and shit even so rotten shit just like that and said hello with a kiss on the forehead speaking honestly genetics is darkness genetics is GE, and agrobiology is the top, and who has any doubts, the selection is waiting for you, comrades, dear and dear comrades, the selection of yours is all in doubt, these are punishment and wet sheet and I grow up I have prepared everything for you, my dear comrades and companions, but my dear doubting and doubtful ones, we have stored up for you all sorts of things like this, things like this and things like that

▪︎

Soviet children eat rolled oats

Post-Soviet children feed Hercules in a plastic Tamagotchi cocoon

post-war Soviet children eating rolled oats

prepared with bitter milk milked from cows that have eaten too much bucking silage

always-Soviet always-children memorize the language of an invasive culture at rotten desks

vocabulary of toxicology of masculinity at rotten desks

morphology of ignorance

interception syntax

phonology of sustained explosion

gradual heating grammar

behind rotten desks behind rotten desks

▪︎

hercules hercules

talk about feats of strength

in the name of the phallus anthropos

in the name of the Anthropocene

philomela philomela

shut up

draw with chalk on linen

scheme to undermine the empire's stem cells

arachne arachne

protect our tentacles

and Donna Haraway's tentacles

and the tentacles of the tentacles

tentacles tentacles tentacles

still capable of feeling

▪︎

approached took by the hand confidently took by the neck by the waist wrapped confidently wrapped in tops gripped flew up dropped the seed confidently dropped caused damage irreparable correct flew up righteous produced in his own image and likeness himself reproduced himself and parent one and parent twenty-one flew up wrapped dropped the seed planted faith in himself and like himself produced a thousand more similar indistinguishable produced elimination of another different different everyone approached took the hand of thousands like each other's torsos entwined confidently tied up comrade with comrade assurances assurances of their good intentions noble intentions to multiply multiply themselves and their likes trimming with scissors what is not like themselves with scissors only correcting themselves not quite or not at all like themselves that's all

▪︎

insurrection

on the range of cut clitoris

erased by the eraser from the pieces of history

sprouted

through the roots of the dust kingdoms

through the shadows of injury

anarchic connections

find pleasure in the air

stick their tongues into the moisture of the cold

secateurs incinerate

one touch of your oblivion

without resorting to fire

Am I looking through my eyes or not through my eyes?

I - what category of time is this?

▪︎

stems screwed into the ground

with whitish umbrellas

combed by the north wind

under every umbrella sits a creature

sifts through cold water

yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

this is the past

the past is the Pripyat of memory

(this is not so much a metaphor as)

it forgot that

nor former mines

nor the former cultural centers

nor former sausage factories

nor former dairy factories

nor rusty Lada cars

nor the rotten Muscovites

nor the rotten Volgas

nor rancid rivers

nor the sour shores

not even Sakharov’s special detention centers

don't melt back

time -

cloudy syrup

bloated stomach

saccharine history

▪︎

I'm the same age now

how much land

I melt the poison into the river

and I always swim across it without holding my breath

with always-open eyelids

the river bottom is covered with a carpet:

myriads of clinging roots

swallowed sand and water

no more water clock no more hourglass

only syrup

time

candied in hogweed juice

sweet sweet always - swim in the juice

with your mouth open ever again

outgoing

never again bubbles