Its Egyptian inventors would describe how it erupts from the belly and plunges into the world, seeking air from inside the chests of others, often dead lovers or compatriots; how Caesarians saw seminal Christians elevate it to god- head—a divine nationalism crafted to last. Our own glossolalia is secular, nearly inaudible, found in temporal boundaries such as those between generations: the ones who crossed the sea to set a flag on the reddened shores at Dunkirk; the ones who held their farthest point to be somewhere in the wetlands of Asia; the ones who remember a beginning but nothing afterward, for whom there is no manifest destiny and no forward. It isn't like family reunions are anything but summits; we can't grapple with our grandparents at some bank- turned-donnybrook in the Dust Bowl— as if they'll forget where they end and their children begin—or converse with those marines who stuck their hands in used cartridges in '68, as if some things were incapable of emptying out, as if the frontier could dance away and remain uncaught, goading us on to find our own voice, to explain it with Jesus or Hoover or Trich Quan Duc or the simplest allegory of all: the World rests upon an Elephant, that Elephant upon a Turtle; should anyone ask Elephant what Turtle stands upon, he replies, "It's Turtles, Turtles, all the way down. . ."© Seth Abramson
from Indiana Review