The Federal District

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Rebecca Gaydos

There’s a part that traces the nation back to brown women getting fucked by white men. And one page has a woman holding a baby. And then another page asks why the Indian men didn’t fuck the white women. And the answer given is that there weren’t any. I was given this book on my birthday. Well actually a few days later because on my actual birthday he didn’t have a gift for me. We walked around the park and I said all the things that the vendors sell look like crap.

Another day we went to the Adidas store in La Condesa, because he wanted to. He asked how much the Mexico jersey was and the guy that worked there told him. And after they lose to Argentina? The guy snapped, The same, before correcting himself, What do you mean lose? I looked at another man in the store and we both started giggling.

Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

History of Happiness

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Alan Bernheimer

Just did the math
Too birds eye for me
Living by wits

Miss out what’s said
Travel size heartthrob
Gravity situation

Confess stupid alibis
Unemployed emotions
Keep healthy distance

Showy brushwork
Rakish dogma
Skirmish in the archives

Equanimity overrated
All puffed up
Homer at home

Sorry for what
Clumsy miscues
Put miles in air

Up for the count
Hero worship
Had a way with clouds

Call it a truce
Misery loves misery
Dispatch illusion units

What mood says
Disappearing zeroes
Tiny white flecks

World’s worst blank
Animal episode
Next undercurrent

Words mean everything
Put skids under you
Waiting for emptiness

To fill with thought
Thought with words
Would be has been

Racking up karma
Knock the dents out
For extra oomph

Every element
Something to someone
Smoke in the shade

Naughty or naugahyde
Spasms of youth
Dead for a ducat

Curious gray eyes
Would be my department
Touching another drop

People want to be
Spoken to as a snowflake
Settle down to business

Top dog hot tub party
Got the burg closed up
Author’s compliments

Magpie fragment
Be a nuisance
The long meow

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from Merry Hell

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Sara Larsen

Helen was a girl as her mother healed
a grub who crawls out of an eggshell daughter to
Leda

whose beauty THEY SAY
“also cost her”

what’s the cost of living in a female body ? of bathing in a waters at Eurotas River
?

She could never look at a bird again
especially white ones
& white was all the Greeks
desire

bloodless women & bloody men

feed it all back into the massive hole

in the Aegean volcanic cunt in the sea

they watch Crete swallowed they say
will the Mycenaeans follow

or shall certain Sacrifices be made ? they say, that Cunt is Hel




***

THESTORY OFTROY THESTORYOF TR OY THE STORY OF TROY
stones embedded in the hilts of shields and swords patriliny

embedded in gore baths of flesh globs of blood
yet they were afraid of menstruation

the chains with which conquerors dragged their prisoners behind them were still
made of base metals




***

κυνωπιδοs
cune – o – pee – dos

dog-eyed one

shameless

bitch-face

κυνω > dog-cunt

Hephaestus calls Hera his mom this: dogface

compliance
dogs fawn
do anything for food
no
honor
no
self
res
pect

it is because she is a dog. filthy and terrible. wide-eyed dog.
it must be because she is a dog. filthy and terrible. wide-eyed dog.
it is because she is a dog. filthy and terrible. wide-eyed dog.




***

we launder expensive dirt in Paris in a cauldron all these hands
inside
with the fibers ratcheting perfume off-gas in a tub. b ut th e h a n d s femme
and beyond femme …

wake up with him in my bed. Kryptogeneia says.

Gold and abalone weave up around gleam from my neck when you see with Other eyes
Blacksea saltdarkens aroundme jewels dump weight

is it far from when we marched sli pped on bl ood bulge-eyes headlock cops

the purge
is bitter

impenetrable shell-helmet split horseshoe crab mound of sinew gore and twisted faces
in combat
hidden

(pupusa) tear gas gas gas gas gas gas

kelp water licks my lips salt tower just enough not to die




***

full of the celebrity of owning other bodies

wilder ness star wards back again

moist black earth bough azure psych-light i am the horror and the joy

what won’t pay the RENT to those who own: dudes ma de this stor y BACK WARD a
woman must always

to kill think to rip the balls from her attacker ward of the state monthly check how
to — take Leda, my mom. or Leo, Andre Orea Eleni me

LET ME TELL YOU ALL THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME ripped splayed
murdered apart by

Theseus at banks River Eurotas same place as Leda my mom! by feathers awful
i’ve always hated the line A shudder in the loins engenders there fuck Agamemnon
and the wall stake beak at throat
all
blood of my mother is first blood continuous limb-loosening BLOOD rusts the world …
whereupon i became an egg birthed

as a grub on

a

hill like any war you wonder
why you ever came home




***

waxed glad soldiers dropped their battlegear it bit the mesopotamian guantanamo
dust their bodies they lay upon the earth the sun bit them for they were not free

Iris flew to me strong-limbed as with double-conscious purple weave I weave my story
un doing the undo desaparecidas feminicidios of woman nothing is indelible, just remember
THAT while you carry a body on earth they do nothing for my sake or yours this war
this war that is not what it’s about;

when you sit in the cold room the weave unties the hands the hands in the laundry tub.

so i went to the wall where they spit upon the tree of Helen. and

pour forth their lily-livery voices; such upon a wall. you know i didn’t go to Troy or the
wall. never was there a wall. but it was insisted and i stood upon a wall.

Men e la us would have drag Paris Alexander by his dancer throat but Paris was a
dance, sat there as one that had but newly ceased from dance his aristo-outfit high
and far above an arrondissement
on fire.

what does she have in her heart Aphrodite for she also stands around the laundry tub
for Aphrodite is me and wears the raiment that walk a walled Parisian citadel for
during the commune, no one could easily leave Paris

but the shine goddess her sun-flash eyes led the way and i did not talk just now
but did return to the weave

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from Profices

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Jane Gregory

everything is wrecked just fine but how do you know the raven to be no mirror to the leaf

leafy shadow through which you know whatever you know

that nothing happens to

i know it was special for you, world, but I always have to go for I am the lung of the bio

sphere

and nondiscursive truth

yay, so toil, smart women be mean, my brain, refuse all work that makes more for others

my brain, obstinate failure of thought to escape itself, i am, bearable self, begun by the
light

of the sky we are driven against, the sky, under which

each committee covers his feet in my house

each committee comes to cover his feet in my house

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Web

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Claire Marie Stancek
*
hunger a pose of pure intent
poised on hunger
poisoned hanging, a wait
pure hunger purifying
holding the body in tense
poison pose, hunger pure
what do you propose if anything
live in hunger hunting
*
Long is the list of supposed
negative traits: over-ambitious
projects, dexterity, cunning,
ambition, ruthlessness, avarice,
poisonousness.
*
light weaving light waiting
light on light, a silken weight
taste of blood, the sweetest light
* what smell the smell of blood
*
It has always been admired for its intricate filigree structure, and for the fact that it is both a way to gather sensory information and, when needed, a skilful instrument of capture and entanglement. The fact that it is spun out according to semi-abstract designs from the body of the spider, that it can sometimes be recycled and used anew, can serve as a
*
filigree firmament:
look at the lines
parting sky from sky
* she fills the Air
*
but in the same breath might
represent—given the frailty of
the web—the mindless effort of
work, and perhaps its
pointlessness
*
Long is the list of supposed
negative traits: over-ambitious
projects, dexterity, cunning,
ambition, ruthlessness, avarice,
poisonousness.
*
And this Empyreal substance cannot fail,
* she
*
longing light
* ruddy blood the hectic spice
* Major ampullate silk is the rope spiders depend on as they plunge
*
It is one of the toughest materials on earth, able to withstand great stress and absorb immense amounts of energy without rupturing.
And until platinum filaments and improved glass engraving replaced them in the latter part of the twentieth century, major ampullate threads made ideal crosshairs for surveyors’ transits, telescopes, and other optical instruments.
*
aware in air
of air as air
itself is, for air
is, but not how
you think
pendant lattice
turn, turn
*
she fills the Air with a beautiful circuiting
*
Long is the list
*
the soul in our body exists exactly like a spider in his net. She cannot move without vibrating one of the widely strung threads, in the same way as one cannot touch one of the threads without setting the spider in motion
*
over-ambient process,
dis/misclarity, stunning
ambrosial luminance, madness,
ominousness.
* And this Empyreal substance
cannot fail,
*
But the Minds of Mortals are so different and bent on such diverse Journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist
*
knowing shapes as smell only
ruddy blood the hectic spice
insects and dream bodies
massy forms in the night
Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

Repeating

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Tongo Eisen-Martin 
From a two floor skyline
An abandoned house talked to me
It said young man
              You are heroic
              And ten years old
 
Among twenty generations of friends. Friends will free fall away. Free fall up.
Free fall to walls with fifth grade speed to industrial paint behind second-hand fences
 
Young man, use quick knife tones. Be bone and brass. Be last laugh music.
 
You are always leaving. Always one change of clothes from the door. A life in escape.
 
Two floor skyline said you are the guide that dies in the middle
                                                                                                                             The friend more blues than skin
 
The face that cheap hotel schizophrenics can place
With 90 miles per hour right eyes
 
Among dry heat killers
Once children
Three feet high
And roaming
And repeating
And aiming
At cotton mirrors that hang on breathing walls

You are ten years old                           Tagging along                           Yawning at well-lit violence

Whistling tool shop songs 
You will be useful
 
You will be high and alone
Flying on a nephew dragon
From a twenty dollar family
In a sky that calls itself
Just more soil


Around walls
That are just walls
Except these walls
Suggest you make wives
Out of highs and currency

Here the air is polite to sleepy glass and bullying walls.                              


Young man,
You will admit
That sometimes
Suicide is power
                         Some people live stronger as ghosts

And sometimes the afterlife empties
 Billions of souls 
               Enter objects
                         Like playground bullets
And abandoned door frames. Even broken glass will prove it has voice too.
 
There are 24 hours behind your back
 

Look over your should right now
Can you hear it?

The sound of drums punching themselves out. The sound of piano parts learned in between assassination
attempts.
 
Be bone and brass. Be bone enough for two souls. Be invincible again
 
Suffer
Red-eyed accents. Professional fingertips. Our gifted victims. Six in the morning beer. The first month of probation.
               -The shout at the wall
 
See these words that shouldn’t be home
 

Look behind you again
Be invincible again
Be Windward
Be a sad machete
Be her son
Be a thief
Steal them back
Laugh too long
Never look away

 



The afterlife will empty
                                                            And walk you home
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The Faraway (Les Effarés)

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Brent Cunningham

from The Sad Songs of Hell


nights for sleeping, days for sweeping
if you missed the allusion wait
next time it’ll make sense

age & youth are equals out there
everyone celebrates, everyone
tries to hurt the blond lords

but violence is white & well-protected
barely anything is less enforceable
you’ll see it but you’ll be dead

the only cure for pain is discomfort
a lot of fine lawns baked into bread
new songs rising from smog

I don’t know, it’s late, I’m wasted
let’s have blood soup for breakfast
& talk communism some more

the best heirlooms are small,
sharp, aggressive, & almost sickening
wearing one should damage us

that’s what smokers think anyway
happy in their cloud of cologne
& carcinogenic meat

their life is fluff, it’s true
they don’t understand love, or ranting
for them it’s all cataclysms

resent, but exist
in any gap of turned earth it’s clear
this is paradise, people

hang us by ropes of archival roses
roast us alive, just say what you want
& we’ll parse the difference

it’s so much better! I’m winning
by speaking this way, lightly
all the way to the horizon

yes, it’s a form of white jail
but look how subtly language trembles
when it escapes the life it was…


Les Effarés

Noirs dans la neige et dans la brume,
Au grand soupirail qui s’allume,
Leurs culs en rond,

À genoux, cinq petits, – misère ! –
Regardent le boulanger faire
Le lourd pain blond…

Ils voient le fort bras blanc qui tourne
La pâte grise, et qui l’enfourne
Dans un trou clair.

Ils écoutent le bon pain cuire.
Le boulanger au gras sourire
Chante un vieil air.

Ils sont blottis, pas un ne bouge,
Au souffle du soupirail rouge,
Chaud comme un sein.

Et quand pendant que minuit sonne,
Façonné, pétillant et jaune,
On sort le pain,

Quand, sous les poutres enfumées,
Chantent les croûtes parfumées,
Et les grillons,

Quand ce trou chaud souffle la vie ;
Ils ont leur âme si ravie
Sous leurs haillons,

Ils se ressentent si bien vivre,
Les pauvres petits plein de givre,
– Qu’ils sont là, tous,

Collant leur petits museaux roses
Au grillage, chantant des choses,
Entre les trous,

Mais bien bas, – comme une prière…
Repliés vers cette lumière
Du ciel rouvert,

– Si fort, qu’ils crèvent leur culotte,
– Et que leur lange blanc tremblotte
Au vent d’hiver…



Note: the poem above is a “transmutation” of Arthur Rimbaud, which I define as a translation made by
someone lacking nearly all knowledge of the source language. Its primary method is to stare at the
source text and somewhat arbitrarily decide what it possibly/probably means.

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My Teacup

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Alli Warren

trees are steaming
ever more vital pliant DINK
I can’t see a thing in the sky
I choose George
Stanley over Fear
and Trembling
Tell why you chose
to do this or that
on each occasion
Nothing with hooves
or heels was it?
Excuse me for not thumbing
the abyss, “the goading urgency
of contingent happenings”
how stretchy the membrane
how drunk the ship
breaching the freight
we port with
however it is
I am and come to know
the ruby field of feeling
and isn’t a life suddenly
laid in all its excess
of doubt & dualism
gag in the mouth I forget
to give sense to
relations that animate
to be carried among them
you are not an engineer
yet forms persist
so topple the column
any place there’s a rope there’s
the earth is not enough
I stick my head in it
I lose my coat


This poem previously appeared in poets.org.

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Errant, Thus Signifying (for Martín Ramírez, painter)

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Hugo Garcia Manriquez

The trajectory of the line
must face this,

“to fall is to fall”
also, “a controlled line is admirable”



First he described him as “he doesn’t speak
just mumbles” later he went on
to say “he was mute” “he could not
speak” and eventually
“he never spoke”

living the second half of his life in a search of institutions
he never dated his drawings, although
the doctor did date some of his works



A controlled line is admirable
and contains the human figure



The materials contain the human figure
and the figure in its history contains them all.



errant, thus signifying
in opposition to the authority of endings
you relocate re-title segments
as response to local landscapes



in which sky of the mind that sky dazzles

Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

Photographing Theater

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Cedar Sigo

Underpass drowned
in moonlight
the tunnel
allows the wood
and ghost of
a young girl
her expression
so vanished
carries us

Cosmos in
the joining
of three tiles
an angel
touches
her breasts
sharp stylus
left alone
two ballroom
Ladies
crosshairs
at each
of their hearts

Older Zuni
woman
hair tied
back in a bun
shoulders tight
and high
and never to turn
the hyper blonde
child is twisted
caught
looking back

Family
pictures dead
queens
white flares at
the top
in points on
black
a stark winter
tree
smiling skeletons
light drawn in
at their temples

The spider
was
a loosely
constructed
coral choker
the legs went
on forever
cut in two
hairs one
up and
one down

Lisbon first
night and
early morning
“Is it ok
for you to
play alone
barely
hidden from
the street? It’s
ok we
pull the furniture
outside here
to sit.”

Smear
of dried
flowers school
pictures the
stems on
the roses and
spattered
paper left at
the desk
a mind haunted
by its screen

Two brothers
guard a sleeping
child smaller
his spirit swiped
down mother bent
to kiss him
the second frame
all the same
rushed in
wallpaper
and posters tacked
under wet paint

Crowded underworld
some are in
pure unaggravated
sleep
men fully dressed
head thrown back
seated
hands folded

You could
see her
ripped from
his side
at the cold
bus station
a broad
single slash
in the screen
gone forever

A polish
woman scarf
tied at the
chin steel
eyes carrying
alchemical
pipe pointed
heavier
at one end
her kneeling
sister with basket
beside her
sticks slipping from
the pile legs
fogged at the
knee and torn

A reclining
boy model
an old
Victorian
smears
to move
the lawn down
into the sky

Roses playing
telephone the
bodice wants up
and in along
the bottom
more of a designer
than poet or
painter moviemaker
the strain
behind the image
starts over

Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

After England

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Geoffrey O'Brien

My voice carries further, almost
All the way to the face, I go
But not forth, or I went suspended
Itself, touching the all that isn’t.
After England it could not be kept
Together, hasn’t fallen apart,
Moves like noon shadows
Forced out from the corners
Along a street of expectations.

Not really. After England used-to
Has a present tense, materials
Stay both stolen and mine,
Anthology without exclusions
Where I imagined I saw the time
After England before it arrived.
I went out to meet the thing
Behind things, displeased with all
The available combinations

Living after England is
Then isn’t, where laughter opens
Onto the short-lived feeling
You should know how to
Go whole days doing
(You had everything you needed)
But do not, after England,
Have a fucking clue.
The food no longer safe,

Phrases stop short of,
No news is good, good
Things come, all signs point,
Objects may appear, it has
The ring. Possession is 9/10ths
Firing on all. Ignorance is.
My lips are. The grass is
Always. After England
The feel of not to feel

When sky invisibly divides
To let tomorrow in, where it’s better
To work than not to, far
Better to do neither, in fact
That’s your job now, reaching out
To touch a gloved hand to the face
Of the weather we walked off in
After England muttering England
Has never been enough

After itself, this little one
Where a good price is contradiction,
Getting your Albion
On then off then again.
And there are no events
After England, rhythms
Have taken their place, flowering
Trees set out along the shoulder
Pink and white as ideals

Of how England was or will be,
The wrong words in the right
Order, an imaginary language
With real poems in it.
After England, empire moves
West but knowledge just spins,
Narrowly missing it, or not,
In the unsung songs of the dead
I came to late, after

As in so much further
Behind you’re out in front
Where not knowing is.
And you call it experiment,
The experiment of the sea
Pouring into the city, people
Into squares, forms that can’t
Hold so much, weren’t
Designed with this in mind

Like the mind itself, builded
Here from ancient materials
That couldn’t predict the future
Or even rise to meet it
But maintain a right of way.
Left through this hedge across
Two fields of hops and lavender,
Up the slope of the iron-age fort
Till you drown in a view of the sea.

Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

Tossing

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Lyn Hejinian

Eternity goes on for such a long time that nothing can happen to disrupt it
Laughter is encrypted grief, but grief is encrypted laughter, too
Hardly noticed, another apple falls into the yellow grass—an event that changes
the apple, the tree, the orchard, the grass
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone says the word
“traveler”: gypsy? nomad? salesman or saleswoman? tourist?
conference-goer? refugee? adventurer? explorer? businessman or
businesswoman? family member proceeding to an occasion, happy or
sad?
Now we’re going to go figure
In the city of music stands a fountain of pitches
Was it not as heroic at a very young age to have died as at a very old age to have
survived
The sun burns every story to a crisp and leaves only a lisp, or lapse, palsy, panic,
or a princess pointing at something across another now
Thrown onto the land, set loose on the ground, put precipitously in place, a
person of modern times will have many modern memories—but not just
those
Why is there no one instead of someone
Watch out, you almost let yourself follow
The sociable book is ample and uninhibited, unashamed of its jolly
idiosyncrasies, unembarrassed by its infuriated sentimentality—o lucky
sociable book off the shelf
Distribute, puzzle, soap a rabbit, link anxieties, follow politics, toe snow
Survival can’t wait

Posted in 73: BAY AREA | Tagged

An Agatha, for Anne Boyer

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Juliana Spahr

written by Juliana Spahr but in debt to Cassandra Gillig


It’s a story we all know. She was right fair, noble body and of heart, and was rich of goods. And yet she lived near a provost, a provost of a low lineage, who was lecherous, avaricious, and a miscreant and paynim. His lowness ranged from rape to belittlement, and for to accomplish his evil desires fleshly, and to have riches, did do take her to be presented and brought tofore him, and began to behold her with a lecherous sight for she looked pretty when she smiled and she should smile more so he said. Then began a series of events to get her to consent to his will and to smile more. Some did do put her in a dark prison. Some did do a keg stand in her name. Others did her to be tormented in her breasts and paps, and commanded that her breasts and mammels should be drawn and cut off. Some read Mark Strand RIP to her. Some did do put her back in a dark prison with no food and no medicines. It is said that she went gladly. That she said your words be but wind, your promises be but rain, and your poems be as rivers that pass, and how well that all these things hurtle at the foundement of my courage, yet for that it shall not move. That she said Over felon and cruel tyrant, hast thou no shame to cut off that in a woman which thou didst suck in thy mother, and whereof thou wert nourished? But I have my paps whole in my soul, of which I nourish all my wits. And yet she healed and when the provost realized she was healed he made her, all naked, to be rolled upon burning brands. And it was then that the ground began to tremble from an earthquave and a part of a wall fell down. So the people came running unto the house of the provost, saying, in a great bruit, that the city was in a great peril for the torments and commanded that she should be remised in prison. And then he didn’t listen and so they then sacrificed a goat in the same of Satan and then of a police officer in the name of Anne Boyer. And then great many did do the putting on of a robber outfit, smashing window after window of the provost’s office, hopping in and out, delicately, grabbing what they could. Smoke bombs and roman candles filled the air. There were more kegstands. There was a long line. All for Anne. Others castrating, choosing at random. Some asked for volunteers, some volunteered. Many rigged some shit so they were connected to wires and flew around Peter Pan style, screeching. Many had a loaded gun, safety off, in their hand the entire time. I am supposed to shotgun a beer here and then tase David Buuck while Stephanie Young shaves every man that still has hair with a shitty bic razor, the dull one I used earlier in the day to shave my legs, underarms, the edges of my bush, especially the front lower bottom, next to my cunt hole which I try to keep trim for the same reasons that I try to smile more when I am around men and the provost. I am to do forced bloodletting of all the men here until they pass out and then make them drink the blood to revive. Then I am to say in the same of St Agatha fuck voting, fuck the idea of cameras on cops mattering. And in the name of Anne Boyer, all marriages and all couple forms. Gun control too. And that Ferguson hug photo. And so when Agatha comes out of the prison she will do join her hands, do hold them heavenward, and do say in praying: Stand on the bar, stomp your feet, start clapping / Got a real good feeling something bad about to happen / Drinks keep coming, throw my head back laughing / Wake up in the morning’ don’t know what happened / Whoa… Something bad / Whoa… Something bad. And after that for to prove that she has done prayed for the salvation of the country, there will yet come at the beginning of February, the year after her martyrdom, a great fire, coming from the mountain toward the city to burnt the earth and stones, it will be so fervent.

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from origin

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Samantha Giles
Marking the paths again and again and feeling for the wetness as the ink keeps bleeding and tearing. The pieces of oblivion flaking off in chunks. And for what. For nothing. So the meat lies inert in the mouth. The tongue keeps finding its purchase in stabbing. Tracing the path of trying to scramble up to the rock with meat still in the mouth. Swallowing down the mixture. Trying to bear down around the blow back. Still jumbling around at the banks darting the ache of ought. The not nothingness pulling at the joints jabbing into the hinge of where something begins to form like a mammal. So lying there, dragged and tussled, snuffling at the fissures. The cells dividing just frame by frame. Hatching one by one. Notice where the lines can’t form into gills where the breath still hitches into silence. Scratching a scratch. Hobbling across the deafened herds with nothing but an extreme case of usefulness. Tucked into the fecund uneven in the bunches that squirm. Not nothing in the in the eventual flap of skin. Nothing like the suction. Just sucking up the dirt like mud, rounding up the sticks for a feathered tempest for nothing.


Feeling the mammal rioting away with no plot to locate it. Some here. Some there. To hold it in the soft part of the palm like a squirming fetid thing. Not nothing. A lid half closed. A science of forgetting. Shoaled together towards the mud. All the tentacles left on the shoreline. Not touching. Hesitant. How the appendages yearn towards motion. How the grasping goes. This tendency towards dismemberment a mutation to hold in the ligature. The very least that nature has to offer. Hefting up the body and back again. Squirming like prey. Charting a change in the membranes. Between nothing and nothing. A kind of twitch of hesitancy. A kind of trick of the light. Remembering to remember when swarms blighted the sour taste of the hot and rapid discharge of an easy target. Not nothing that’s a commodity of an gutting in the grimace. One here. One there. Not nothing. Pecked around the waste.


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from We Are Nothing and So Can You

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Jasper Bernes

Diagonally, by love and hate
in equal parts
propelled, the mob returns
like a chorus
the cops keep getting
hit with, in the head
brick and bottle tra la la
of fuck you, pig and die, pig, die

the mob, torn together
by each temporizing, tangled
moment in its series
returning along the old animal tracks
of total science to mark with metaphoric
shit and piss the places where the earth
parts ways with each reason for enduring:
its also-rans, its would-have-beens
crashing into the shatterproof
curves of the cell wall, behind which
the makers of measure and rule
shelter in disordered nomenclature,
recounting in pantomime
our unfortunate tenure
as minor villains among the plant life.

Just then, you feel the scare quotes
C-clamp your skull, interatomic
emoticons spazzing out intransitively
in the middle distance where demoralized
shifters replace all sense of the past
with continuously updated commentary
from the compliantly defiant crowds
who compare their purchases
with the bland openness of experience.

They will never be a real mob
now that nature has been democratized
by these marvelous poisons
our rounded-up truants
leave dusted upon the rocks and trees.
As for the rest of us, we learn
something important about ourselves
watching from the loading dock
as the mushroom cloud
announces the end of another season—
e.g., that each riot really is
an assemblage of other riots
washed up on the boulevards,
from whose faded corpses
one dresses and arms one’s comrades
the total inadequacy of which
as equipment for the task at hand
traces out in negative
the seat perilous of the party historical
the poetry of the future
whose sweet new sounds
will fill with meaning slowly
while the seas rise.

Can software destroy hardware?
Can a class, acting strictly as
a class, abolish all classes
as the answer to a badly phrased
question might by sheer force of obviousness
cause the questioner to rise
blankly and walk into the ocean,
while the black flags cut from the robes
of executed magistrates
wave non-semaphorically,
where hope ends and history starts.

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From The Compleat Purge: Volume I

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Trisha Low

Last Will & Testament of Trisha Low

I, Trisha Low of the City of New York, State of New York, USA,
declare that this is my Last Will & Testament.






Article I
Preliminary Declarations

It’s enough to die of spite.

xoxo,
trisha.






General Provisions

If any beneficiary or beneficiaries of this Will shall contest the Will, or in any manner
attempt to have it or any trust or beneficial interest created by it declared invalid,
such person or persons shall receive no benefits from or interests under this Will and
my Will shall be carried out as if such person or persons had pre-deceased me.

I have entered neither into a contract to make wills nor into a contract not to revoke
wills. Any similarity of the provisions of my Will to the provisions of the will of my
witnesses or any other person, if any, executed on the same or on different dates than my
Will, shall not be construed of as evidence of such a contract.

Unless specifically set forth in writing and acknowledged by the donee thereof, of any
gift I have made or will make during my lifetime shall not be treated as satisfaction, in
whole or in part, of any device or bequest in my Will.

On this August 16th, 2012 in the City of New York, State of New York, I hereby sign this
document and declare it to be my last will.

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two excerpts from INFRA, an afterword

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Jocelyn Saidenberg

10.5.14

equivalence is not the same as existence
or the same as living or you can go now
flushed out from the shrubbery
to a surface whose angle is
moving toward you
& your dying
but the moths are the moths
eating wool blankets & flying round the
desk light one & the same ones
nil igitur mors est ad nos
tenderly to
escort the walrus herd in flight a lapse

to walk facing into a spider’s
web along the garden path & left there
the spider astride the shipwreck
of what I can’t avoid
that being oneself can’t be
being self possessor of oneself who can’t
own seeds of self whose being who
oneself now can’t mean one

10.26.14

I buy flowers two bunches
Norma says she eats chocolate
for those ones who can’t any
longer I translate pastor
cum traheret for the shame
of having horrible things happen
forsaking this vividness it costs
too much for tenderly living

no stars no moon it’s
been two weeks & she’s
still traveling she feels
more away more distant
redundant & its precious
juice drained from a ciborium
it’s her syntax of pattern
& prayer that’s hocus pocus
hoc est corpus but not
now royal for raving
for virus

she shepherds her
across the waves in
her idea boat in a song
as her atmosphere of promise
an apostrophe to future as
I stumble into this where
atoms split I rescue
objects it’s my duty I
leave things as they are as
if to be summoned I remind
myself that she can’t

to conclude Alice performed
her ritual of outrage a ceremony
for those who no longer who hungered
she didn’t remember
the drawing she’d drawn of an owl
but only the owl’s feather
Beth sent her that the drawing
in reply was sent for

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Political Postscript

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Daniel Benjamin
I turn on the radio before I begin to see. I hear the call of the political, it is everywhere.

Scanning for the moon and seeing only stars, expecting that thin cupping shape a bit swollen now, and earlier the sky clear enough to see the other side. So later I just looked for the other side and saw only stars among the streetlights.

Now the mornings are cold. This is a lyric poem whose fantasy is communism and space travel.

Which is why I love it when a bright star turns out to be plane or satellite. The moon is soft clay, made of dust, hair, crunched leaves, the underfoot. With the radio off, only the occasional trill of the garden birds lulls me awake, only the dull roar of not distant roadways, only the neighbor’s tread.

I won’t sleep on the call, it is everywhere. I only sleep now and then; my ears, always warm with meetings, my feet, twisted into these orientations.

I only fall luckily, looking up on the part of the street with dimmer street lighting, and that’s my privilege.


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from The Totality Cantos [15I+50H]

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Brian Ang 
            Amass pessimistic concrete innocent economy bits
  Exposed expert ego chronologies
                 Applied associated atomism harmony frames
        Dependent activity technique
          Made armed libidinal foregoing material gnostic stranglehold sketch turn
                  Consequence
    Everything added
      Clear servant withdrawal categorization metaphysics accuracy love devices
              Ritual refusal galaxies measure personal constant coitus aesthetics thought relations
            Expect kind particular difference motion model correspondent tongues
          Analytic gravitational shadow commandments trained arbitrary conscious pantheon universe mountains
                Attack modern selection doctrine existence
      Pervasive human cultural continental mandala actuality interplay unity ideas
        Trivial determinant preoccupation theory circle fruit
  Mistaken canons
              Enchanted grace denial
                  Corollary touchstone praxis thousandths
Duchy
                  Adoption coup textile construction painting historian mutations
  Demographic sublime manner camera extinction compliance facticity situation object
    Grip glaring positive political carbon century news works
            Humanist neighborhood chancellor cornerstone opportunity method
    Globe elements reconstruct coherent survey number empire bishops
                  Advance same secure economic charismatic pattern vanitas brain set
              Deciding elaborate existentialist ownership poetics technology effect
            Solar conceptual reformer spiralled separation example
          Relationship
Riots compendium before enemy scriptures
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Anything in Opera

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Jean Day

“ … everyone now living is experimenting
like the beautiful River Volga
writing herself in lazy meander
fingerlets inactive
in the hay between tractors.
Then what am I by comparison
—Augean?
Where the ombuds meets the diligence
with odic effervescence
anything in opera plotwise
renders one’s own account small
one’s way
paper thin.
Nevertheless we begin.
The exact words were overturned prophylaxis
scratched onto the stable floor
by the helpless ass and his sister
whose candid retort rhymes proxy
precisely with precosity
and something ending in ‘head.’ Then
will our wooden limbs fly
with a giddy-up
from here to the last eucalyptus nut
where otherwise fog might find itself dreadful
and hanging.”

From that point on the hike was silent.

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To the Diamonds (after Newton)

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Laura Moriarty

from Glass Action

Sulphurous gold-bearing vapor
signals the presence of copper
and gold near the mountainous crown.
Diamonds found also after the glass crackt
and some of the matter (diamonds from inside where)
pressurized carbon forms the hardest substance
(Superman does this in an early episode)
as later sand sticks to hot iron and flows
Active Geothermal Systems and Gold-Mercury Deposits
And mercury is found in local fog

Recent theory of diamonds
Jupiter and Saturn awash in them
floating in liquid hydrogen-helium also
Moon sized one found in constellation Centaurus

When, back to the laboratory,
red dusty Sulphur adhering to the glass
like wax and flew most of it away
resulting in weathered masses of clay
the famous “blue ground”
held over a candle
they flew both away
in the same heat and time
(also called the sublimate)
As ejecta including diamonds
explosively placed by volatile magmas
creates beryl & red emeralds
rarer than diamonds they
form near the surface at low pressure
instead of far below at high

To make a diamond. I Newton.
Take the whitest flint thou canst get &
beat the outside & dissolve the rest as
much as thou wilt in the white water
& when it is dissolved to clear (not to a pap)
put it into a violl and stop it close
and set in warm ashes & in 12 days
it will congeal to a hard gray
stone then increase the fire that the glass
may be red hot, let it cool & take it out
it will be like flint but polish it
and thou never sawest such a
sparkling diamond or so hard

I, Newton, having been not only a witness
but also an actor of such mysteries
of Nature as the world is not worth of &
the wise men of the world do scarce believe

the Vultur being upon the mountain
crys with loud voice I am
white of black & red of citrine
An honorable stone which is hidden
In the caverns of the metals
Surely I speak the truth

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Want

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Rusty Morrison 
19    

hear news anchors then the bank     clerks adopt this accent the      next popular speech tactic 
arrives inarguable       now it’s personally yours       power penetrates bodies 

says Foucault to govern from       inside mostly soundlessly        you will soon hear us all used 
as history’s peculiar       alliance built simply of      its passage plus some friction    

caused by the indefinite     articles that any new       deception drags with it did
you think words were a way to     police yourself syllables     could be tamed with your counting 

thought you’d tempt what Keats left “light-       winged” in “some melodious       plot” to befriend your failure
to be more than fugitive      in the “shadows numberless”       you can’t just form subversive     

songbirds harmonically       transmitting “thou wast not born      for death” along the latest       
fiber optics to voice an      instantaneousness that’d       kin you to others in this 

brokenness to write what you      don’t know as if lyric hears     it




Previously published in Boston Review
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Transbluency

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Kit Robinson

The poem doesn’t care who writes it
It is waiting in the wings
A belt of ekphrastic energy circumnavigating the earth
The planet we are made of
While others struggle to be fastened down completely
By standard protocols of identity and access management
We enter an archway and just keep walking
It’s good exercise
As opposed to war, pollution, greed, hate and delusion
Though these certainly have their adherents

I is a sum total adding up to now
Subject to future operations
Add to, subtract from, multiply by, divide by
And drive by
Trailing a long history like a tail
Reaching back into the paleo
There’s no place like magma
When it comes time to relax
And think it over
But we are too busy being multiples

The fountain draws from many streams
By way of the existence of cities
Shoots its spray to the heavens
In Technicolor and black and white
This experience of seeing
Is basic to being both awake and asleep
An insertion just beneath the skin
A workshop just beneath the floor
Water beneath the surface of the earth
Darkness

Transformation is natural
Woman to man, man to woman
The long road to being
The butterfly’s return
Silence where before there was none
The poem does not let go
It arrives from the future incessantly
Ordinary fingers pick up on its cascade of plans
We can see it from here
A head with stars for eyes

To play extremely slowly
Is to caress the surface of time
To speed to abolish its domain
Cheer up my brothers and sisters
And walk in the sunshine
Our understanding is so very great
Being beyond the comprehension of a single mind
Life forms outstrip the rigorous calisthenics of calculation
Populate the ocean floor

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from Early Evening

Posted on April 1, 2016 by C S Giscomb

1.

Red-tail eating a plump squirrel in one

of the elm trees. I’d meditated already, had

a hedge on the night but owned nothing past

that. Surrounded by crows in three of the other elms—who

had come suddenly out of nowhere—shouting Caw as he

picked that squirrel to bits; “the most common hawk in North America.” Early evening

at Penn State, still light and no leaves yet, or they’d already fallen off—

late autumn then or early spring, two thousand something, probably two thousand three.

Off the hip of Old Main—ten crows, maybe

a dozen crows. One is a gun, Charlie Brown; after

all, one is a gun—a single

composition of many parts. Shadows

lengthen, Charlie Brown.



 
2.

Where was I?

I remember what

happened to me and can grin about that up

to a certain point. Address could be bright

and vivid or it could just be To

Whom It May Concern, or the nickname

for a whispering daemon, orders

in his hand, Charlie Brown. You might

ask, How do you know?

I’d say, Push comes

in parts. Two is a shoe, meaning

we’ll play both sides of the net, as it were—each

has its “natural boundaries,” its neighbors and “partially

overlaying ranges.” Knowledge seems easy, but who’m I to say? Swallows

and swifts, Charlie Brown, swallows and swifts. Pull

it apart: I’m who I say, I’m in town and the night’s young—it’s all doable and I’m

at your service, Charlie Brown.


The full ten parts of this poem first appeared in Iowa Review

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