HORMINES

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Madeleine Stack

and no! to a superb love &
no! to belonging to kisses and no! to
a stomach storing your juices for a rainless month.
you will walk the length of your bloodstream
feet pickling in all wastes you encounter.
when you are really loved, properly loved,
fully encompassed in all aspects of your humanity,
you are no longer free to destroy yourself. or grow
hormones germinating in pans of molasses
trays of inky growth sopping over their edges
clotty waste tangling in the drain cover
glands of some poor beast plucked and twanged aghainst
an ancient draining board. glass bell swarming with
slinky roots. life itself. the fetid music of the ways
budding fancies of mouths put underground
breathing in the matted dark
a harsh fog blinds the authorities to the will
of their populaces, plotting delighted in the suburbs of
the mind, distinguishing process from error and
propagation from desperate synthesis
monoliths dedicated to anaesthesis, monuments
erected to radiation. the nuclear tower skipped eating today
to make room for the huge leathery trickstitch
that would see her seam blown, as they say, SKY HIGH.

I am delighted in my little sin
ordering metres of drywall like nothing’s happened
sending wreathes to the bereaved
somewhere between sunlit doze and sightless mania was I,
hopping from one fucking foot to the other.
penetrable to the extreme, pleated with darling
rosebudfolds and wet little hydraulic suckers.
I bounce like a goddamn olympian
my form gets grave with the going of the light
supercoolant and the chrome pools of my eyes diminish
with the evaporation of coming night.
is there help about
some technician who might notice me and straighten
my steely skirts, hold aloft the fatal error in my wan complexion.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Dodge the Dodo

Posted on June 1, 2022 by James Lucas

It’s 10:15 on George a Tuesday
call it a rostered off day
I take slow admiring the art deco
lobby of the Dymocks Building
because somewhere up above is Birdland
who’ve rung to tell me my Esbjörn Svensson Trio
Good Morning Susie Soho has come in

And I’m sidling up to four Otis crates
out of the 1930s as sockless hipster execs
risk barked ankles from goods deliveries
and I even take the time to read
above the foyer clock time conquers all
which it told me Monday, when Birdland was closed

but today it’s open
the cage labours four floors
more brush turkey than Charlie Parker
while I’m thinking all the shops I want
nest high in heritage building
corner suites
rucksack repairs, jazz CDs

I pick up the EST and flick desultorily
through sales table discs almost buying
an old Catholics (not on sale) then walk
four flights to daylight, the mall,
consider picking up some socks and jocks
but on a third thought drop into JB Hi Fi
on the chance they’ve YoYo Ma’s Bach cello suites
(they don’t)

but its OK I remember other music outlets
(classical music outlets) which I google
but there’s nothing now Fish on George has closed
ditto Michael’s Music Room
and that place in the QVB top gallery
I’m sweating by the time I get there
there’s no sign of it
another eaterie, it’s all high-end
accessories and landfill ready clothes
and of Yo Yo who sold out the Opera House
last week and whose spruce-speaking gut
upscaled our impulse likes and piques
to places outside grief and love
there is no trace;
if he exists
it’s as a string of ones and zeros
and he may or may not feel something
what exactly I’m not sure’s been lost
maybe some way we had of breathing.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Acts of kindness

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Piet Nieuwland

Going forward into the night
ambiguous with satellite emitting diodes
viscous crumbles of honey stars and a flight of lips
the air is loud with geraniums
the moon tree shakes in a gust
dripping a sweet syrupy glow
over a world of ghosts

As the planet rotates through space
the gardens drool with greens
and the ferocity of trees
light falls over hills into lyrics of gums
the particular gravity of the day
shifts the autumnal weight of shadows

with the insistence of rain, each moment falls
into superfluity, a raga
approaching silence

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Notes on the After

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Derek Chan

– After Ada Limón

Not how it all wintered into scraps of half-inked
pear blossoms, nor how the pondwater never thawed
in time for the lotuses to proclaim their succulence
to the desperate Spring, it was the inscrutable loss of how
anything could begin afterwards which bowed me.
The clouds kept saying, there will come a day
when all of this blueness will be worth it.
The months when I couldn’t tell if what hurt
was some unbreakable obsidian barb, or the hurt
of a growing, living thing. And it seemed almost pitiful,
how the frost clasped so closely to the birches;
sleeves of snow stitching the vastest grief
-coat ever conceived, entire fields suffocated
in a plead to be held. Only to be met by the soft
shock of winter unhinged at the speed it arrived, the music of held
breath returning from the scentless aftermath, wet hearts awakening
behind Spanish mosses, entire sunlit temples
of snail-shells unclouded along the highways.
How it was never about survival, but becoming
the patient rot beneath it all. Like the first of the fuchsias
now unfurling their infant flames on this patched,
uncertain earth; all of it rising for what we can’t name.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Lawnside Snake Hermeneutics

Posted on June 1, 2022 by E. Jesse Capobianco

Hold your body at the angle
at which your body must be held

Here is a word: rattle

and having and having and having
now is a time to have

If I say: the you behind you
is a tucked stubbed toe and:

pull back from a memory
the you watching is syruped
in lightless cherry pie filling

Then you: know this was already
the case and yes you are
born only to say: I remember
the fuzz-pop particulars of being born

Here is a new: memory

yes that failure in your childhood is why
yes I taste your secret shame do you
see how you have to believe

look up over your wet head
take that peak down between legs
we are birthing each other

and here see: our ouroboros spreading out over the world
growing only the emptiness inside its loop

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Flame Trees is on the radio

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Stephanie Powell

it’s the perfect night for driving.

The stop signs are sha-la-la-ing at the curves
of country highway –

white lines beaming. Tankers blazing through country junctions, then nothing.

This place, layers of pearly innards that make an ear
to listen:
I offer no resistance to such emptiness, to the BIG quiet.

Dripping molasses. That’s what it is to drive
even above stone crunching wheels.
Piloting streets,
past the footy field, war memorial, bakery, the only Vietnamese restaurant in town.

Radio beamed in from Bendigo, slow.
The past snug in the backseat. Wherever you turn it goes.
Compelled around the back ridges. The hairpin bends.
Let it ride.

High beams hitting stringybarks along unpaved road and
trunks flashing up as though under x-ray.
Still hot outside the rolled down windows.

Fuck, you could drive on and on and on.

Watch the sky run pastel,
until the engine is gasping –
tank coughing through last of its fuel.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Negotiating with Ray White

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Nicola Andrews

South Auckland property
for sale by online auction today
921m2 of freehold urban zone land
3 beds, 1 bath, 2 cars, 1 free-standing sewing room.
This is a great opportunity for keen developers,
investors, or those who are looking
for the opportunity
to add value.

Request an inspection.

Nana and Granddad’s house
Goes under the hammer today
Te Ākitai Waiohua whenua, home to
4 kids, 10 grandkids, 2 great-grandkids.
So many hui, tangihanga, piss-ups, catch-ups,
kid’s birthday parties, fishing expeditions,
and multi-sibling-gossip-fests
took place here, you know.

We miss you.

My dear grandparents
Bought this place 57 years ago
for 4160 pounds. I dunno how much
money that would work out to be these days,
but I reckon their unassuming, squat estate will easily
clear a million today, even though Takaanini
isn’t anyone’s idea of flash,
not even close.

Close, closing, closed.

It’s funny –
what is emphasized by a realtor
And what is left unsaid. Like how damn
cold that house is every winter, how we shuddered
into more jumpers till our goosefleshed arms could barely lift.
Or how the windows in the lounge swing open
wide enough to hoist a hospital bed inside
but a wheelchair won’t fit in the bog.

All mod cons.

A family friend recorded
a video of the neighbour’s place
being hauled away, trailer-bound to
Kawaka, up North. Bloody developers, eh?
Souls of the departed journey up North
too, to Te Rerenga Wairua.
We all make our way
to the setting sun.

Need a ride?

Well, none of us could
jet out of there fast enough,
and now we’re all dragging our feet.
Whānau huddled on the floor, our own Ihumātao.
Pull up a chair for those hard-case haunters,
and set out the temuka with milk, sugar.
Those old ghosts rise from room to
room, best put the jug on.

He konei rā.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

13 Ways of Looking at Fatherhood

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Edward Leeming

After ’13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ by Wallace Stevens

I.
Among twenty men lined up
waiting for footy tickets
the only thing moving
was a father, bouncing with no child in sight.

II.
Is that heat rash
or sensitivity to tomatoes?

III.
The father ran
from room to room.
The bib was in the car.

IV.
A dad, their dad and their dad.
The tribe that sooths,
they can all be parents
for someone.

V.
Only a father
can laugh at being pissed on.

VI.
The past, present, future.
Time moves
like a fog-like mist
enveloping the land.
It is all centred
on this little human.

VII.
Do/Don’t/try/eat/sleep/cry
a father always/never wins.
Just do what you feel is right.

VIII.
Can you please keep an eye on her?
I am going to make sweet potato.

IX.
When the father left for work
the world opened up.
He left his hat at home.

X.
The chance to change
from lad to dad,
a transformation broaching
on the sublime.

XI.
Socks last seconds — kick kick kick —
Memories of socks a lifetime
revived at a daughter’s 18th

XII.
She looks like you
and nothing like me.
We both said.

XIII.
It was afternoon all day
and evening yesterday.
It was too hot to walk
and inside was hellishly boring.
A father sits on the couch
and sings that song again.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

The Feed

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Jake Goetz

across this Eora river valley
morning sun seeps be tween a syntax
of glass and concrete warming the yard
and the shrivelling leaves of a cucumber plant
depositing yellow flowers into memory’s mulch
(rubbing the male’s anther into the female’s stigma
pollinating by hand for lack of bees) while out in the street
a piece of black tar sits like a stratigraphic fragment
some museum might one day label Bitumen of The Exponential Layer
a time in which the colony failed to read the most simple things
i.e. the way ants pick at an ibis squashed like an ice cream
in the gutter carrying the tin iest offcuts along the path
and into a yard where two workers dump an earth-
worm of carpet into a green and gold skip bin

and to think of this street as a collage
of colours localised by weath er patterns
mediated by ocean temperatures changing
from an increase of carbon in the atmosphere
blues and yellows peeling from California bungalows
separated by collapsing fences held together by orange
and lemon trees an ornate Victorian steel gate
rusted by southerlies and over grown with rosemary
or a Triassic sandstone façade crumbling above
post-war Doric Pillars that suggest a mini-Parthenon
ship-wrecked in the Pacific and to which an old lady clings
tending roses until her back gives and her son
now living on the outskirts of the metropolis
moves her into a home while her house is cleaned out
by two workers to be inspected by a pair
of newly wed yopros blow-ins from the suburbs

this street is a bloody gem
the husband exclaims at the inspection
preceding an invitation to speak by popping his sunnies
on the back of his neck and talking about his new start-up
that will deliver food using lab grown possums trained by robots
made from materials mined in the Congo and Cambodia
and that his business has this sustainable edge
each bot having been manufactured in Hamburg
using power generated by wind turbines scattered across the North Sea
really it’s a genius idea he laughs and licks his lips
for delivering burgers and chips to the cotton-mouths of tradies
who pull so many billies they mistake the Rabbitohs for the Raiders
on the Friday Night Footy and the only real expense
he means once they’re properly established
will be the feed

and some months later having secured
a $2.8 million mortgage the couple order Vietnamese
from the cute place rated 5-stars on Uber Eats
before stripping down to their anther and stigma
pollinating one another on a new beige leather couch
from Ikea after which they both agree
that tomorrow they’ll chop down the citrus
and plant a nice arrangement of natives

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Bull Terrier

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Sam Morley

Accustomed to a gaze of surly
pre-conception, she was fighting
centuries of straight-up entrapment
caged in the anvil of a nose hard
as a horse pulled to a cantering stop.
The boughs here knock down
on river stones and her snout
bounds through creek water moving
around a warm bow without
a thought for the terror within.
Even my kids see fear in the fur
and the pyramid crease of her head
can’t say much in defence when history
is one rule away from brute force.
Her stick gets lost, and her face flaps
like a flipper and this day may just be
different as the owner (ever on-guard)
stands from a garden picnic
to say yet again she is good with kids.
I raise a hand to quell the deep set
eyes and that long egg of a mind
and see the blunt joy there below
muscle taut to the point of white.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Watching Adrianne Lenker Play Guitar with a Paintbrush

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Kristian Radford

slow-motion cool, calligraphing the air as if to polish sound
to a diamond, as if to brush your way into the core
of the simple progression, everything about you is a light
touch, a deft waltz shuttling fractals across a barn floor in
looping peregrinations, I imagine zooming in close to
the vibrations and getting lost in their gentle chaos
the muted strings humming around me like hair, I imagine
the roughness of the wind as it traffics around the sound hole
pushing waves of dusklight back into the room’s lungs
a breeze whipped up by a fast body in a wide skirt
your weakstrong voice perfect and scarcely believable, your
porcelain mask brittle but whole, I haunt your desert world
as the sun wings through the open windows, a different sun
to mine, older and tired, glowing with the waxy orange of
experience, your song suspended in the atmosphere
like a wince, a smirk, the percussion of ideal love
everything temporary but falling exactly into place, then you
paint yourself and your song out of the picture until all that’s left
is the dry air, the stopped breath, the shock of a heart cracking
under the weight of incomprehensible fullness

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Alina

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Jo Langdon

‘As for me, I produce awkward objects’
—Alina Szapocznikow

To know her
completely by name—starting
points—friend

of my friend offers by text
lessons in pronunciation
that begin by ‘soft n’: midway

or further still, & annoying,
as though impersonating a bee sound.
Start with lip lamps

at another outset: where breath
might surface—hold between
tongue & palate. There,

the woman’s head is
pure suggestion—all promise
& easy enough to conjure. Yes,

I’d sometimes like to take off
one half of a face, too: mine
or someone else’s.

This soft relief of leaving
the jaw line, alone—eyes
resting away

from each slide
of gaze, each surface
blazing in impressions,

intimations of softness.
Alina, for her part
compels: ‘Chew well—’

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Windows

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Louise Carter

Four straps over one shoulder: the usual
baggage, plus a blood pressure monitor.
At twenty minute intervals it beeps
and constricts, measuring my blood
as it struggles through tunnels.
Hypertension:
a gift from my stressed ancestors.
I remember my Pop scraping every last skerrick
of wine from a foil cask with a metal ruler
and Nan’s salty treats – Lay’s Thins –
stashed on top of the fridge. Our hearts
and brains are prone to blowing up.
I’m trying to stay calm
but I’ve just climbed four flights
to my boyfriend’s apartment to discover
one of the keys I had cut is a dud.
It’s lunchtime and I need to pee.
The machine grips my arm like a Floatie
inflated by an overzealous parent
with Olympian lungs.
Through the smudged vestibule window
I can see across town, where my friend Tamara
is currently dying. It’s a process: an unspooling
list of things she’ll never do again, grieved
in real time.
Seemingly mundane milestones
like birthdays take on weight – she cried
to realise she wouldn’t reach my age:
thirty-eight. Talking about the future
feels like a faux pas, and attempting to relate
is met – quite rightly – with scorn.
The pain disrupts her sleep, denying her
even that escape into ignorance.
When I leave her place
I feel guilty relief. But a livestream
in my mind plays in a browser window
where her sunken eyes connect with mine
and ask to be witnessed.
Standing outside
Steven’s locked front door, I picture all
the boring things I would do in there:
make tea, defrost bread, open my laptop
under the pretext of poetry or work
only to scroll news sites and social media
and get increasingly depressed.
I leave my bags
and go back to the street: a frigid wind tunnel
of weekday efficiency. Pensioners in masks
mill outside the medical centre.
Office workers queue for chicken rolls.
I sit beneath the last remaining red leaves
of a Japanese maple, trying to resist the pub.
A month later I’ll buy a Fitbit
and my blood pressure will go down.
At Tamara’s bedside I’ll check my step count
while neighbours on nearby balconies
take pictures of the setting sun.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

(When) a hard look at what’s holy (softens)

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Amy A. Whitcomb

A while ago, I told my boyfriend that
I won’t put the worm on the hook
because I think the worm looks

like my clit. We were naked on the bed
examining said specimen when he said no

way, but I maintained that to me it does,
and he asked, “Do you want me

to get the worms?” Live Bait,
a Styrofoam cup in the fridge.

I did.
He did.

The worms looked
cold. Since then, quail feathers, a snake shed,

the deckle edge around
Gone fishing.
I wake up

a warm body
left to sleep in.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Summer Taper

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Svetlana Sterlin

those were the best days.
pelting rain illuminating
the overcast pool. clouds
as bleak as that Christmas.
what to get Dad on the eve
of his redundancy? or my
mother, burdened with a
promotion in a job that drains
her? or you, who i might
never speak to again? this
is the scattering: like bolts
of lightning through clouds.
no silver lined shapes up
there today. but the air hums
with warmth. and our laughter
beats out the thunder. and

something we did well was
talk. about nothing, like
the constant patter of rain
on the pool. the drains
slurping the dregs of our
meaningless conversations.
all those familiar sounds.
now the thunder booms
like an echo of those days.
this is the scattering: rain
flung to the four corners
of the earth to find a
landing ground on our skins,
the pool covers, the hoods
of our cars. sometimes
it thunders. today, a whisper.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

2 virgoes 1 zoom

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Alice Bellette

for Autumn

a leyline –

i suppose we call them

songlines –

a gentle tug of the thread like fishing line

wrapped around the stars

making constellations

as above,
so below,

for one to find another

meanwhile, swimming in the womb,

ready,

waiting,

to be born and be who we need to be

but the sediments of the universe

shift glacially

thirty orbits around the sun

sufficient alignment we don’t question the ancestors

as they tenderly guide

with deftly worked and wise hands

the cosmic threads the umbilical cords

while we ask to

lobotomise the sky

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Soloist intimations

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Cameron Lowe

Surface to dare, clap & wave
idly as blowfly lands on beer can’s lip
plastic Buddha cracks
his Borgnine grin
& Manager man sayeth: “Consider Sun Tzu…
Sisyphus, the drying wings
of cormorant…
Imagine riding the elephant”—
Heaving spring heatwave
red poetical jellyfish
rash, sweaty stinky armpit thunder—
“But the farmers had moved away,
the barn was abandoned and the granary
stood empty. And since winter was not far off,
the little mice began to gather corn and nuts
and wheat and straw. They all worked day and night.
All—except Frederick.”

*

“No beetroot, please…”

*

Meld song’s mire balcony daze sun-bright Tuesday
hangover. Drop saw nail gun currawong map
of Croatia—
Busted thong. Leafy street daydream
smiley life palaver. A job is a job
is a job. “Are you
for real?”

*

“Yeah…nah…maybe”—
“What is the scope of your work?” Huh?
“Scope.” Recall Dinger Bell: “Ya got shit
in yr ears?” Add eyes. DOOR
THAT SLIDES.
Dear Sir.

Quoted passage – beginning ‘But the farmers had moved away’ to ‘All – except Frederick’ – from Leo Lionni’s Frederick.
(Collins Picture Lions: 1974).

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Between Victoria and Valparaíso

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Elena Betros López

I ride like an orbit
round the circle of native grasses
close by my house
it is the day after my movement towards the other hemisphere was halted
it was after being with the dancers in Alice’s class
it was autumn–– just, no the end of summer
these imported seasons are not a well fitted frame
the sun warm
the breeze against my body–– cool
the bike, my body and the breeze

and between them a transposition
a décalage

it was two days after a planetary announcement of bizarre proportions
it was sometime after our reading began
reading Lisa Robertson poems as a movement across the pacific
a South-South axis
between riots and acts of care
you said that everything was speaking and that the walls were incendiary
and between fires and megafires are new words
and worlds.
I continued reading in the city turned red

patterns of atmosphere and ignition
are like my movement between those speaking walls

and on the matter of unprecedented proportions
we are between disease and the governmental reactivity and the pandemonium
reading
between our voices
exchanging back and forth
a space is created
to create a space–– even if facilitated by the voice record function of WhatsApp, it is still a space

as we were speaking parts of the planet were moving through us–– we were not alone
held by wind and dust

my body continues like an orbit
round the circle
between the bike, my body and the breeze
is this transposition
the cool waters both caress and hold my body
existing here and there
swaying in this cool pacific blue
a South-South axis

your excitement in letting me know about the wind
changed the length of the vowels in your speech

not an I alone

you read to me in my mothers tongue
a familiar language I do not know
what are poems if not beautiful sounds read by a voice?
You read to me from a continent I have never been and cannot imagine
yet I walk within it, carried by your voice
not needing to go further than a landing on the ear

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

(The most terrible thing about being a poet is: The impulse to attach meaning to everything)

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Eliana Gray

I’m a dumb bitch because I do shit like
ask people to tell me what kind of potato I am
and believe them

I’m biting myself on the arm
I’m biting myself on the arm
because you told me not to but also
because it feels like. . . . . . . . a treat

I’m a contrary little piglet when I want to be
constantly nuzzling towards sensation

It’s so much more comfortable inside the myth

Am I at my best soaked in cream and pepper?
Do I seem like someone extruded
into a more appealing shape?

I like to leave the broken pegs in the washing basket
For myself as a little surprise
Because: without struggle
there is no growth
I like to make up lies for myself
and believe them

(I am the unstoppable force
and the immovable object

I am a Red Desiree
sexy anthropomorphic tuber
heavy-lid cigarette eyes
strung with pearls
smiling smiling smiling at you
in my sexy potato heels

I am a very special baby
who would
never
ever
do anything wrong)

I like to believe them so often
I forget they’re untrue
this is called magic

I like to say:
If my self-knowledge wasn’t this powerful
I’d never be able to outsmart a genius like me

I tried breaking a plate once when I was angry
stood on the kitchen lino and thought fuck it
I deserve this catharsis

What’s not very satisfying when you’re angry
is
relying on other people
for your entire sense of self

Turns out
I’m a boiled potato
skinless swimming in butter

Turns out
I’m a forgotten bowl of Mccain’s Potato Smiles
gently sweating at the picnic

No one wants
a reminder of their own unhappiness

Everything’s a little greasier close up

Yeah, I’ve made myself unrecognisable from my original form
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ve got nothing to offer you except

A creamy interior
free of texture
A canvas for salt

My face in the shape pleasing

to 67% of the focus group

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Two Shadows

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Christian Ryan Ram Malli

The man was wearing a floral polo shirt. Meaning,
he’s just like every college guy in Manila out for
a quick fuck. Except, you were out for lunch, and
for once you weren’t in the mood. The server asked
if you wanted the dessert served early, and both you
and the man answered differently at the same time.
Your eyes kept landing in open spaces, and his remained
on your covered chest. When he asked you about
your week, you didn’t say that it was all about him.
But now it was about the kid on the next table,
the flickering letter at the front of the store,
the mall music, everything but him. Perhaps, you
didn’t think he would be that big, and you wanted
so badly that he stayed pocket-sized. And clickable.
After lunch, you watched a movie. And after the movie,
you went home. The rain, like fingertips, you were so
sure of it. The night before, looking at his nudes, you
never knew generosity so sticky and so far away
you wanted to eat your phone. Now, he sent a new
thirst trap. The sharp expanse of his hip, the video
barely panning to his ass. From experience,
you know that you can put an entire fist in your mouth
and come out alive. Today, you just let your phone die.

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

girlboss leviathan timeslip

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Elese Dowden

most honor’d friends; leah, mesdames et mes yeux –
gods, dolphins, dauphins and fascists
(good afterble, constanoon!) the year is 2020-something deep inside of a
parallell universe where adriana la cerva still exists flossin’ & girlbossin’ like helen
(of troy) in skin-tight leopard print and over yonder in the great impossible
queen di’s slinging big tennis dialectic w ms. ruggerio hark now, hear
salomé shrieking! chasing fritz down the cobbles (with a whip 😈) what a time to be
alive!!!!! the renaissance commences, as it should in the middle of the
fifteenth (should it???), century new year new me new diet (of
worms) hegelian yoga to prepare the body – retrospectively – for the
state of nature to come: in this girlboss leviathan timeslip, where the 90s is taken as
imagined given the present moment never occurs, harry never met sally and
freud, jung, lacan?? never born no jeremy kyles followed only us:
the hbo original door-to-door medusa, sweet serpentine, laden, trojan, wheeling
and dealing jamberry thermomixes (on this timeline there are no illusions)
(or ‘multi-level marketing schemes’), no sir nor sires no one argues
about david lynch endings or accepts the love they think they deserve
elisabeth of bohemia said ridendo dicere severum, through what is laughable
say what is somber: watching it all happening like pi o (before him ////,
before her) the iphone groove in your distal phalanges the aflw players
kickboxing in the park hunger leaves no
trace on this diminishèd timeline ⏳ the laws of nature are eternal; and yet,
easie… … we do not suffer newton, malebranche, nor patrick bateman
though violence’s most impressive trick is kicking itself in the head
in a quiet room near the edge of the woods there’s a one-trick pony
(named tony) playing buckaroo it’s a slippery slope to solipsism
the [homoeroticism] to [german- engineered consumer goods] pipeline
ecce homo, ecce… personne 🐸 even lauren conrad remembers
sentience; the beauty contest that started it all:
the bold (audacieuse) and the beautiful are all around us, here in girlboss
leviathan where nothing was the same and everything could be différent!!!!!

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strange FM

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Christopher Andrews

what the fridge magnets said
vast fame and broken sight

order reigns by reorderings
listen to me stolen time

move things and breakfast
smoke vents and a bar fight

what’s in the fridge: data gems
item: some little sonnet

weigh the dadaist fragments
fastest-moving handbrake

damages withstand the grief
lit memento stolen site

make soft and brave things
snake eats wolf is snowflake

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at the british museum, mawadah points at a stolen artifact

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Jood AlThukair

People did not even need to travel to the Middle East, as exhibitions and art dealers brought
the Middle East to them.
—The British Museum

down the street mawadah tells me she misses egypt but sometimes egypt is brought to her
in berlin she says i saw the bust of nefertiti & waved at her from afar
because there were borders separating us because touching her face
would only bring her home & i guess they don’t want that
summer says they were never this careful with our bodies

an orientalist calls me a bedouin chasing a fool’s paradise
& maybe i am a fool the soles of my all stars are rubbed raw
from all the chasing & chasing & chasing
but hey at least i know what my tombstone looks like

in new york i think of edward saïd when fatima goes to class in her
periwinkle coat & she tells me she feels arab everywhere
so i remember him saying he never liked going to museums that much
(i also know what it feels to burn under the limelight)
instead i tell her it’s okay you just crossed an ocean

we’re at the british museum & mawadah points at a stolen artifact
& jokes about bringing it back home but listen what if we actually do
what if this dissolves the border & all our wounds
what if our dead are no longer dead what if it wipes the canvas anew
whatifwhatifwhatifwhatifwhatif

zein says to figure a border i must first start with the body
but i’m tired from all the reading & stretching & rubbing my shoes loose
trying to uproot/unmap my skeleton from the earth
if the body is buried elsewhere what is home
if nothing remains of it what is home
stuck outside its geography the same way they stole the moon

at the biennale mama comes eye-to-eye with some
sculptures from outside her stance splintered & hung dry
she asks if this is colonization & i say yes
i don’t bother touching their faces at all

Posted in 105: NO THEME 11 | Tagged

Beets

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Elaine MK Helou

When does the master plan end? I remember they cut the ribbon on the road connecting the murdered swamp and the capeland, as if they weren’t already connected. I remember they permitted the first trickle to enter Lake Orr, when the hills housed more than just urban sprawl. I remember my classroom bordered the edge of the school, that the windows showed a universe among the trees, and that months later there was bare earth. I’ve been allergic to construction work ever since. Kurrawa Park has me in hives. Don’t talk to me about the Guragunbah floodplains.

*

The mixed business has become more focussed: a café; blue-drab and clean, and surely fair-trade in this day-and-age. Chemical free. The house built by doomed wishes to live the wrong life right— demolished, three-stores of luxury private underground burgeoning against the zoning laws— the street stretches straight into its sound barrier— painted green, an acre cleaned— for property, for poverty, pressed and swelling into the edge— the woolly vines and downy wattle won’t last much longer— houses rolling over battlegrounds and cowpastures. It’s comforting to see history being honoured like that.

*

I don’t know how you feel homesick for a place that was never your home, or that you only ever saw in greyscale. It was my mother’s home and she was my first home; the threads she worked from there to here were never too tight, were always securely loosened, and were wet with everything but the leviathan, and yet still somehow on fire, and yet still somehow a single fibre strung from singed to savaged ends. We always had cherries, apricots, and a salón; always lived along the water, made our own aniseed dough-bait, and caught our own fish — I have never in my life bought a fish — we tended for a time a towering coniferous faux-pine, whose death cast on the torso, the main body, the sleeves all done and edges waiting, and actually I prefer crochet these days. So now I knit too tight, my fruit bowl is empty, and the fish are all blown up.


Beets: The plural of house, as far as I’m concerned

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