Doomsday Bunker is a poetic homage to the Měiguó beetle, an extinct species of insect first discovered with the excavation of three sacred petroglyphs in the Xinjiang region of China in the mid-1700’s. While the petroglyphs are no longer intact, what is known of these creatures survives in a handful of texts transcribed from the originals — the most notable characteristic relating to their mysterious and highly debated behavior. It is written that Měiguó beetles would provoke more docile insects into violent encounters, and then retreat from the conflict by recruiting other beetles to help dig underground lairs.

The order we need “in the commons” might be more microcosmic, less cosmic — more “rudeass” “nothingness dissembles into” since “ping-ponging ingredients” “have not tried to / make it cohere”. No “totality of / saturation”: let’s conglobulate together.

—Bruce Andrews, author of Designated Heartbeat and Co-editor with Charles Bernstein of The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book