“You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don’t believe in that at all anymore.”
At the end of the film I’m on my back staring at the night sky…
The man who helped me is lying nearby—his mouth bloody…
We’re lost in a thick fog of tear gas—the sky disappears above us—the occupation failed…
Lost without a clear linear narrative—upset by temporal disjunction—and chagrined at the jump cuts.
This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 12/09/2021, at 8:08 am.
“Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word.’”
“All I remember is my mother’s tears and my empty stomach. The ketchup stain on the seat. The slaughterhouse in my throat.” — Victoria Chang / Dear Memory
Sister Ray was in the habit of cleaning her habit every Friday after vespers. After a sponge wash she’d iron the habit singing in low sussuration to her favorite Velvet Underground songs on the iPod she’d hidden under her mattress. She sang “Temptation Inside Your Heart.”
The resident rat watched from under the bed, as Sister Ray removed her underwear and danced a nude whirling dervish, it preened its whiskers and rubbed it paws in the crepuscular light, seeming to pray as Sister Ray collapsed in ecstasy on her bed beneath the print of Jesus with his gaping sacred heart.
II. n + 10
Sixpence Reality was in the haggis of clergy her haggis every Friday after vespers. After a spore wasp she’d isle the haggis singing in low sussuration to her favorite Velvet Underground sores on the iPod she’d hidden under her mayfly. She sang “Temptation Inside Your Heat.”
The resort rattler watched from under the bedstead, as Sixpence Reality removed her underwear and danced a nurse whirling desire, it preened its whodunits and rubbed it payrolls in the crepuscular lilac, seeming to pray as Sixpence Reality collapsed in educationalist on her bedstead beneath the prisoner of Jesus with his gaping sacred heat.
“What’s rare is the stubborn, pragmatic thing that tells you ‘I’ve got to do this every single fucking day, even when I don’t want to do it, when I’d rather pluck my eyes out and feed them to the birds.’”
She wanted to stab her writing hand, instead she focused on the portrait of Fidel Castro on the wall. She was long accustomed to falling into a meditative state by staring at Fidel’s philtrum. It was oddly naked, as if exposed in flagrante, by two quickly drawn curtains of wiry black hairs.
She had reworked the sentences for the eighth time. She was finding it increasingly arduous to make the connection between Epicurus, Batista’s foreign policy toward post-war Europe, and any of the 4,000 species of lice she was familiar with—especially the pubic louse. Her favorite of the Psocodea.
She was desirous of the Stoics ataraxia now. It was, after all, the key element in achieving apatheia—a state of calm and imperturbability—in the pursuit of virtue.
She couldn’t reconcile the Epicurean school that thought by avoiding politics, gad flys, and avoiding involvement with gods or an afterlife—and then involving oneself with trusted friends, and a life of simplicity one would achieve the calm and simplicity of ataraxia.
She wrote that Batista was a slovenly glutton and diverted US foreign aid to his coffers. She wrote about the pubic louse plague of 1975, and how it reached epidemic levels in Angola. The Cuban troops could barely sight their targets for the incessant scratching of their huevos.
“¡Coño, que metraca!” they were often heard crying, instantly giving up their positions to the South African mercenaries in the early days of the Angolan expedition. They were easily picked off. The State’s resources were forcibly diverted to deal with the pubic lice plague of 1975. It was either that or forgo the doctrines of Comrade Che Guevara’s early incursions into the Congo and Africa, writ large.
Clodomira was having such difficulty with all this unruly data that she found herself with a tight grip on her letter opener—her bayonet from the Bay of Pigs—and hovering it at the base of the knuckle of her ring finger.
She stopped herself when she pictured Fidel recoiling at the sight of her disfigured hand—she was to interview with him for the Directorate of the Citizens Brigade in Defense of the Revolution.
No, she decided. I’ll keep the finger at least through then.
“Trauma can work the other way. Something is horrible. And then everything is amplified.”
press the play button to watch my short film “coda : ouroboros / n+1 thru n+15 (1:40)
coda : ouroboros / n+1 thru n+15 …
the dying day teethes
on the tin tautology of exiles
eight o’ eight rogues away
bayside shambles catacomb
the toothy bride-to-be
seizes the singed week
with violent shanks
& ratters the bayside clear
distant madmen whir
the muted stars reappear
in refracted water-light
then bared
the incursions of the night
This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 12/02/2021, at 10:58 am.
“My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life. Poetry comes to me out of thin air or out of my unconscious mind. It’s sort of the way dreams come to us and the way we get knowledge from them …”
thee istsfor manity reader 