Cartouche (Sands of the Desert Remix) (2009)

A remix of Kristen Bissaillon's poem 'Cartouche'


Hard to get off the roads. Abdicate, bypass. Hyper-
naming homeworld. Even Voyager I ferries
hieroglyphs. Turntables link sun

and sun. Departing the heliosphere. Lose
your face for days: an antidote. Words no longer
family. Become aerial, chaos-bait. Palpate

frequencies, patterns heard in pattern-
less. What sun scries. Return to nothing
but the impossible. Heat

travelled. Desert compass an
encumbrance, tarnished silver reflector.
Here the tomb-wastes, ground and sky of

once-flowing city. Remnants of
Ozymandias’s amusement. Shadow-
found. Drifts of laughter coiling sands.


Below: Cartouches for Ramesses II (aka Ozymandias) at Luxor Temple, Egypt.