[editor’s note. The following is a further installment of John Bloomberg-Rissman’s ongoing collage epic, composed, as with much of his writing, (almost) entirely from words or sounds appropriated from other writers. An extension of the anthologizing impulse, which is what brought him close to me in the first place, he describes his sources further as “written / composed /constructed in real time, daily, out of the materials presented by that day (whether via RSS feed, Facebook, books received in the mail, emails, tv, conversation, or anything else the day brings).” And this new work, pursued day by day, he tells us, “will last as long as Trump and his aftermath.” (J.R.)]
This energy must
contain a property and force infinitely superior to anything we know. We can
conceive of a being which, just by raising its hand, can produce light, draw
energy to it, push it away, and organise it. It is possible. If the elephant
can live for 260 years, it is because the organisation of matter, in this form,
allows for it. But why can we not imagine living as long, in a different form
to the elephant? Without a trunk ... why not? Mayakovsky was a lover of
animals, and yet the photographs that exist of him fondly cuddling his pet dogs
are rarely reproduced. Meanwhile, the brooding series of photographs taken by
Rodchenko one afternoon in 1925, which show a smouldering and,
uncharacteristically, shaven-headed Mayakovsky have become iconic representations
of the poet. In other words, we do not know if beings exist in other systems or
galaxies, nor how they are constituted. What about the boneless bears in the
valley? Their smell belying their beauty, their eyes knowing us from when we
are beasts also. You telling me that is why it is fatal to look them in the
eye. Giant birds also are nesting out there bigger than cows. The term “a body
of water” is apt, for here was a mysterious body thirty feet long, eight feet
tall at the far end. So he has another shot of akvavit from the bottle on his
desk, giggles, gives the figure a nice curly beard. A Theory of Birds, then, opens with phrases stitched with commas
that are both light and startling: a grammar-flux that produces the effect of
something falling out of or off the page. ‘I entered through the empty cage,
hips first.’ ‘Can the map eat?’ The questions that follow invert their cardinal
nouns, reverting to zero each time the next one is asked. Alsous proposes a
‘collaboration with the dead’ but also a paradise of solar pathways and
outcomes. A ‘previously’ as much as an ‘almost.’ A jar in France, a blonde hair
in Fez: fragments in the shape of an ibis, a harp, a broken lantern, pinning
them on a sky-red space, which also shakes — shakes so hard that letters lose
their place. Or, as García Márquez put it, Columbus’s Diario, ‘a book that speaks of fabulous plants and mythological
lands,’ was the first example of quote unquote magical realism in what became
known as the Americas. Ergo, as Alsous notes, ‘While invading the [quote
unquote] New World, Columbus writes of sirens in / his notebooks, evoking the
half-women, half-birds of Jason’s / Argonauts. Every time I look for women, I
become more bird.’ I ...
I didn’t know and nobody told me and
what
could I do or say, anyway?
Sure, Yemeni hospitals have been
bombed, in 2015,
and 2016, and 2016, and 2018. In
war’s heightened fog
mistakes are bound to happen.
Sure, one million people have
contracted cholera, the same
illness that appears
in 10 cases a year in the U.S. Sure, international
agencies have written
famine and crisis in spirals and one
report briefly mentions mothers
unable to summon enough milk to fill
the mouths of newborns.
Another describes the fate of a
mother,
who used to sell boiled eggs in the
morning, now
a ceiling of charred blood turned
black,
and how do I know the sky I look to
at night is not also a ceiling
of charred blood turned black,
and what could I do or say to the memory of this mother,
or the echo of neighbors who shared eggs in the streets of Sana’a?
In American college they taught me
to use it’s complicated,
as a sign of intelligence ...
[etc, etc]
until no one remembers what you were
talking about
to begin with.
Surrounded by bone, surrounded by
cells,
by rings, by rings of hell, by hair,
surrounded by
air-is-a-thing, surrounded by
silhouette, by honey-wet bees, yet
by skeletons of trees, surrounded by
actual, yes, for practical
purposes, people, surrounded by
surreal
popcorn,
in other words,
modern seismographs withhold all flourish. They are, appropriately, a measure of
the force required to keep a mass still. Through a negative feedback loop a
pendulum is held steady, and electronically, the results are presented to the
user revealing exactly how much effort was expended to ensure that nothing
changed in the confines of the device, that all remained still. We watch the
price of calm bob and dip without logic, and tick away the expenditures.
That’s where we are
and why we buy our groceries
a day at a time
do you like the word crisis?
He only speaks
in shrill modem tones now, or when mad, in a deep infrasound made into a
perfect sine wave when it hits his gums.
Maybe that’s where it all washes up
Maybe that’s what’s stuck in my
throat:
“I’m so happy to see you” — she says to the second, the minute
and the hour
It’s seconds 4-8 we’re after.
Her brother was an extra in a film.
The
Gangs of New York.
They asked him — can you speak English?
So what if he said sí?
They gave him “Angry Irish Laborer
#12”
For ten takes they rioted.
For ten takes anonymous hands
cleaned and replaced the scenery.
I mean.
I Have HAD it With the World
I don't know about you but I have
HAD it with the world.
huatvaeti hnagdc r iot wp oitbhl
civairocnin — ogenicg round
water burning
I haveh ad it withu rchinb ...
isguised as
illegal U-tums at the GW Bridge
holdmgu p the commuteJ jkef
ilterings teel planktont hrough a whale's gill,
bgruollosm cihrcalnet dolb ep1
ic1kly atc yluotbhu rru resmtst aoiwnsa
swings past your skull,
I havef uckingH ADi t
------
0 0
1 I
~
~
►•
¢
better h.v m. g throuo c e O •
t I see nyoosom. tly wrong not e
B"ble
. E Iuuon . al 1
. 11 s who pa
Irwm Catu u thi. day
to 5 h one
The area of
right triangle AOB is equal to the area of lune AB, isn’t it? The lune is
bounded by segments E and F, where E is a segment of a circle whose midpoint is
D — also the hypotenuse of right triangle AOB — and where F is a segment of the
primary circle whose midpoint is O. If the circle is the foremost mythological
figure known to humankind, then the lune is evidence of the circle's work. I
mean, 9 is 3 times 3 and the final digit of the single progress between one and
zero. 9 is never quite enough. Forty-five on the clock, 9 requests a quarter.
It goes Sun | Earth | Moon. The order is entirely rearrangeable, the different
sequences are identified as northern & southern eclipses, lunar and solar,
as well as empty (sun earth moon). So yes, it is useful to consider the leaf as
possessing a centripetal syllable, as in 5-1-5 (eye eee, ten with one in the
middle). Between fives, the middled six in a sequence of eleven is the stem, a
pivot where something shoots and holds or tumbles. When walking through the
forest — field, alley, coalmine, supermarket aisle, etc. — count syllables by
tapping your fingers against your thigh. There are many other valuable ways of
counting to eleven. Do so how you feel comfortable doing so. Kathy tells me
that women in Texas these days are having plastic surgery to make them look like
Ivanka Trump.
[Note: Sources: This energy ... why not?: J Posadas, Flying saucers, the process of matter and
energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and the socialist
future of mankind (tr. David Broder); Mayakovsky
... poet: Rosie Carrigan, Mayakovsky
(U of Sussex PhD thesis); In other words:
JBR; we do not know ... constituted:
J Posadas, Flying saucers, the process of
matter and energy, science, the revolutionary and working-class struggle and
the socialist future of mankind (tr. David Broder); What about ... cows: Toni Morrison (RIP), A Mercy; The term ... end:
Rebecca Solnit, “One Story House”, at Jackie Wang’s at https://loneberry.tumblr.com/ Giulia Tofana the Apothecary, 14 Oct 017; So: JBR; he has another ... top: Anselm Hollo, The Danish Cartoonist; A
Theory ... bird’: Bhanu Kapil, Zaina Alsous, Raquel Salas Rivera, blurbs
for Alsous’s A Theory of Birds, at https://zainaalsous.com/a-theory-of-birds/ Zaina Alsous; I ...: JBR; I didn’t know ...
capable of it: Zaina Alsous, “Apologies to All the People in Yemen (after
June Jordan)”, at http://www.glass-poetry.com/poets-resist/alsous-apologies.html Glass: A Journal of Poetry, 2 Aug 018, and
“Violence”, quoted in “riots and/or poetics [8/2019]”, at https://my-blackout.com/2019/08/02/riots-and-or-poetics-8-2019/ BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics)), Aug
019; Surrounded ... popcorn: Jack Collom,
“Ecology”, at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53245/ecology-56d2325e956ee Poetry Foundation; in other words: JBR; modern
... scenery: Matthew Whitley, various, in Do You Like the Word Crisis?, at http://communeeditions.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/do-you-like-the-word-crisis.pdf Commune Editions; I mean: JBR; I Have HAD ...
fluid: Steve Hirsch, “I Have HAD It With The World”, Anselm Hollo, “from
Guests of Space”, Evan Hundhausen, untitled, in {EMPTY SET} Summer Writing Program Journal Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics Naropa University 2000; The area ... one: Robert Kelly, Jack Collom, Alan Mudd, Joseph
Braun & Marielle Grenade-Willis, anon, “Various Moons, at http://www.poetsonearth.com/sun/2016/1/5/various-moons The Lune; Kathy ... Trump: JBR (NOTE: I think I’ve covered all the sources,
apologies to anyone I left out]
10 – 17 Aug 019
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