out of reach of their hands, some have ground down to tinier

piles of dust and sand at their unmoving fingertips.

23.

River, an interactive performance piece:

Sit or stand silently. Close your eyes until they are still.

In the stillness breathe in the river moving inside you.

It is a thick smell, a color. Touch it—not with your hands,

but with your entire sensual skin. Touch it with your flesh.

Drink from yourself until you are full. Realize the emptiness

made by your fullness…. No, no, no—Don’t repent. This is

a museum not a church.

123.

Marginalia from the BIA Watermongers Congressional Records, redacted:

To kill take their water

To kill steal their water

then tell them how much they owe

To kill bleed them of what is wet in them

To kill find their river and slit its throat

To kill pollute their water with their daughters’

busted drowned bodies washed up

on the shores, piece by piece

205.

The water piped into every American city is called dead water.

300.

There is a urinal inside a curtained booth in the corner.

The lit sign above the curtain hums and flickers: Donations.

You have nothing to give.

10.

Metonymic Experience:

There are more than 60,000 miles of waterways in our bodies—

veins, arteries—the red lines of our own lives. We are

topographies of sustainable greed—dragons be here now,

in our bellies, in the cracked bowl bottoms of lakebeds,

bloodshot eyes frayed like red speaker wires scorched

in the sun. We thirst. Our thirst is a caravan—pilgrims of

scarcity. As we die of drought, we splay in the shifting sand

like old maps to follow, ones that led us here to begin with,

brought us to this masterpiece of thirst, as architects and

social practice artists. The curators ask us to collapse

as naturally as possible, in a heap—so those who come

behind us might be immersed in this exhibit of thirst,

as if it was their own.

Soon.

67.

There are grief counselors on site for those who realize

they have entered The American Water Museum not as

patrons but rather as parts of the new exhibit.

68.

The drinking fountain blows a metallic blue ribbon from its spout.

41.

Embroidered martyr banners hang in the entryway:

A swath of cloth and flag for the rivers who refused

American citizenry, who would not speak English,

no matter how badly they were beaten and bled.

7.

Text RVR followed by # to sign up for the text message survey:

What does a day feel like when you’re nourished

on the bodies and fleshes of those felled for your

arrival? A butterfly sipping on the opened neck

of a horse stiffening beneath the mottled shade