SPAM002
SPAM002
Meredith Grace Thompson - the hammer
Fred Carter - from notes for presenteeism & sleep
Natalie Cortez-Klossner - STILL LIFE
Cassandra Troyan - Untitled, Port Ref: TN2/5336432 (For Fred)
& five 'FFT (Fast Found Textures)' by Federico Federici
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
Alex Grafen - this song what is sung in it
Ian Macartney - from Comment Section
Sam Weselowski - from COMBINED & UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
Caitlyn Main - FLATTERY (extended)
Raian Oliveira - finally introducing myself after 5 years on youtube
Emer McGinnity - Poverty Alliance Webinar, 84 words
William Gee - good day
- lovely day
Kushal Poddar - A List About My Father
Rachel Cleverly - A Good Age to Go
Ollie Tong - from CAUSTIC NETWORKS
Alex MacDonald - Until Then, The Balcony Is Closed
gentian rhosa meikleham - underpinning
Tom Betteridge - EXPERIENTIAL GROUP
- NURSERY
Imogen Free - Tuesday Afternoon
etaïnn zwer - this particular dyke life (living/recording)
Alex Noble - birds
- at Christmas time
spin coat
Tom Crompton
tho any line will do it is useless to
reverse no hope like a feeder
nothing-loops
(quiet as this poem started
backing into cages we’re the same
sunflower seed the cheap from cheap
reading like-rushes and lark of a
lollop twatting
routinely (the head
against glass
not my day this
trays migraine
surface eased
by the ringaround after in corsa
and giggles it’s all shopping
by music kids pigeon impression
crumbling through the big big sleep
from next door a chiff chaff no fist no
ordinary grease state this
shit-trough for an accent
rough plans
bummed out by uppers on waking
and necked by a cadent dawn
yawning gas speed and snake magnets
dribble networks
dug up frames from basement’s where
we once dwelled all listless but not a forest
a few trees rattled (unable to focus
stiffs and investors go here
nice drive for sum wall art jobbie
the hard shoulders all read fuck ‘em
into poetry not getting in trouble
but punched down on by chances and rates
my preferences set to mosey set to spit
bad brains and hooded crows
the spoils of the park
go outside of the park get it
in through the boundary
of evergreen winnows
ark my sub cooker grave my counter mouse
assay of starkers (not quite one
but not you either cos am
lowly n sockless through fields
mild silage blistered
and incoherent to call
up
on luv
yeah you know it all this but this
is like a map returning
to the cut between reels everything lifted
no receipt and no sample towards dreamy
the pits and lands of the part-light tip
-ping into the bean phase stutter
on the substrate iron fingers (blowing up late
onto the table to dint vowels
trying my hardest
not to wake you
these municipal extractions don’t count
waste and bugs and owls
tho I’ve nowt to adjust you (from my bedroom
the scream of the walloping stars
they are having a benny
they are having a do
went booloo on the regional fader
used to race along the towpath
mornings of lipbust to shimmer
to keep up
without keeping
now here is a form
now fill it
first sap of not
winter not spring and not summer
cut rhythms echolalia
resin hat
somewhere in retail
above retail
the signage is singing
is he sound
your brother
is he sound
this song what is sung in it
Alex Grafen
this song: what is sung in it?
words about a mirror: watch
your life in it & you will see
Death working like bees
in a glass hive: you will see
not just no people but their
positive absence.
gone is the rain of still
life: the apples have had their day.
nobody needs me &
nobody needs me &
life is glimpsed thru
a glass of dry wine
song strips
the tangle of
features that you
outside the world
imagine
don’t depend
on a sudden & surprising
harmony, but on bad taste
& crude responses, on the
frogspawn’s sticky pop, on the
white ceiling falling asleep.
Hermaphrodite
Astrid Alben
Shape of a screaming Goya face-to-face with the face of
my early life a boy is a boy by birth not a girl not a choice is
breaking news worse far worse than when Poet longed to grow
up a Jew chronicle man’s history hard-pressed to my diasporic
chest. A slug (hermaphrodite) glides from B to trachea
drainpipe go-kart boy girl girl boy boy girl girl Goya boyohboy
Goy — the rage of sex is fragile outlives the scattered ruins
no amount of Fairy Liquid will wash the mucus off.
Loose Squares
Ezra Mars
We are trash thrown from skyscrapers
Kicked out of trailer parks and picked up crying
With the cold sweats in suburbia
We are junk to be used and abused again
We ride shotgun to traps for our daily dose of filth
Our pockets stuffed with crumpled presidents we beg our internet daddies for,
and we get discounts because men want to lick our pussies
Uber is the closest thing to God when you’re stranded on a week long bender
and town stretches away from your grasp
I lost myself in Grindr blowjobs and Grindr heroin
An older man asks me if I’ve ever been in handcuffs and I say
Don’t you see them on me now?
Let’s compare DUI stories and all the times we made an Irish goodbye
to go shoot up
Look at my track marks and tell me the color is unique for such a pale kid
clean needles and dirty environments
We were the graduates of D.A.R.E
caught up in escapism and feigning to feel something other than the struggle
to stay sane
We don’t stick around long,
we prowl the streets and chat rooms looking for the next fun time
We don’t understand danger because in our minds it’s more dangerous to be sober
So we linger around Sheetz parking lots and Jewel-Osco's looking for the eighth day
When God tells us that to feel anything you first must feel pain,
and if you want to see pain–
Wait till the fix is dry
Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 1
from Comment Section
Ian Macartney
Saw them at primavera sound In that same concert i kissed an irish girl Punched a bunch of
people Lost my cellphone Almost had a heart attack In the end i found the
cellphone It was not broke
It was biblical
Cheers from brazil
I’ll tell my secret to the perfect stranger >.<
It’s 3am Christmas day Why am i here
This hurts in a beautiful way
A girl from tinder brought me here
I didn’t even meet her
It is unlikely that anyone will read this or care But i really hope that my life will get better
soon This gives me hope that i can better myself as a person and open myself up
emotionally I love you all
A sort of perpetual chime somewhere in the wall
Probably
It’s late and time for me to stop trying to open the door
Perfect for another gloomy day in los angeles
Let’s all do the naughty virtual things we so crave
I will find a matrix of love in your psych outs Is there a mansion in the works for the kids of
the next generation
Me Should get ready for my first ever job interview
Also me You uploaded Nevermind
Update The interview went really well
Millionaires fuck with you Aren’t they just a a barrel of laughs
And why is that Why do people who As punky youths Seemed to want to change the world
Seem to become less effectual the more successful they get Because Intrinsically
we are On a bacterial level Just a grouping of parasitical flesh
Ace song Vote for it Biffo the bear is here too Woo
This is great for long bike rides at 3am in your sleepy small town
My moment of doubt When i remember who i was This song makes me remember coming
back to myself
Alright I will open my mind I am ready to accept god Show me the way As an atheist i will
try my best to give this a shot Here we go
Mastercoco says Garbage
Mastercock doesn’t know real love
This video was posted 4 years ago and has 13k views
I know all about the brakes-don’t-work dream
My personal favourite is when you don’t die right away and then wake up but instead careen
off a bridge into a lake and fight and struggle until the car fills up with water and
you wake up sweating and choked up
Anyway Great podcast
I’m from algeria
I was listening to bbc radio 1 on euro truck simulator 2
I did every thing to find this song Now i’m addicted to it and bbc radio 1 Help pls
Sick
So this is new generation vernacular You use a word which is either vomiting or other illness
to describe something which is awesome Fantastic Mega Incredible Does not make
any sense
The shit dancing in this is sick
Hey bro She didn’t deserve you anyway
Sometimes When i’m alone I get naked and play this song on my speakers while doing the
dance that is thicker than oatmeal made of cement
In a 100 years this will be nothing but a couple of encrypted bars of code on a long forgotten
part of the internet 1 day a scavenger searching through the space of the internet for
lost media will come across this and experience what we all feel listening to this
And all of us will look down from the purple heavens and gather once more and
share our memories 1 last time
I think when i die i want this played at my funeral
Not to signify what i was But only what i wanted to be
Everyone in the comments is so much smarter and more philosophical than me
Cute
Love these grindr vids
Fyi Hook-ups will catch up to you and eat your soul
I’m a truck driver and i listen to her
She cracks me up and makes me smile
My daughter turned me on to her She is a good soul
It’s currently 2:40am and i am having a party by myself
This is what i drink to at 3am and cry and dance in my room
Happy 3:42am I am shaking my ass to this all over my apartment I have to be up in 4 hours
I just didn’t expect me A 15 year old To relate to a 30 year old It’s wild
I used to think about death a lot when I was a kid 8 9 years old I would lay awake in bed and
it would frighten me so much i would cry
You’re not alone
My best friend caught me his shirt for me on that day : ) Smelling the shirt as we speak
I’m still jealous that you guys got it
Hey you :D Fancy seeing you here on youtube Come here often Hahahha I miss you bro
Professional Yes Yes Yes My friend joy Maybe that’s not the right word But want to write
Heard this song at a starbucks in seoul South korea
I’m korean Live in seoul How was your trip I wish you had a good time^^
The song that prevents my early morning suicide I’m deadly serious :)
Do what makes you happy Get through it Right before i killed myself from malnutrition i
vowed to get better and here i am Free Doing yoga daily Devoted and alive Please
do whatever it takes to be happy
Lol Cringe
I have only slept with women i have had a long-term relationship with
Hey Bro Are you okay Like I saw the thing about you killing yourself and Like I’m glad you
didn’t But for real Do you need Like An internet hug or something
I’m graduating today and i know i won’t talk or see her or them again and i’m fine with that
I am not a troll
I work
I Personally Would not want to go to heaven if i can’t bring my porns with me And can you
imagine being in a place where at least 10 other people like you preaching all the
goddamn time I would beg for death
This is brilliant
and i say that as an eclectic pagan myself who works with dionysus
I’d love to see more
I met some dudes on chatroulette and they told me to listen to this
They were right
He’s hot :3
Despite everything that happened I truly hope you're healthy At peace And even in love again
You'll almost certainly never read this But i wish you all the best
I actually really disliked them Like low-key hated them And thought they were too ugly in a
weird way But i don’t know what happened because now i’m obsessed and i feel i
should apologise to them personally Though they probably don’t give a shit what
anyone thinks of them And i want to be friends with her real bad
The sports channel is showing the tampa bay bandits and the houston gamblers of the
usfl playing on march 3 1985 Houston won 50 to 28
Hi :(
Hi
Hi
from COMBINED & UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT
Sam Weselowski
Madonna says Canada is boring. Let’s hear it
for the quitters. You’re making our city look bad.
That’s why they call it “fucking with you.”
Nothing like barbed wire to break your fall.
“I’m something of a cultural export myself.”
Use me for: books, CDs and DVDs, heavy items, tinned food
and breakables. Surplus for the nonplussed. Then
what are we waiting for? Indulge me or ignore me.
“Canadian” in a bad way. Don’t be scared of debt.
Economists suggest that, objectively, “some people are poor.”
Let’s kill some time at the collective. Give me money,
give me sexy. I keep waking to the word “textual.”
Whatever desires. The half-circle of memory.
Spit in the lock and the knob turns. The difference
between having a stable boss, and them having you.
Strike a historic deal to normalize relations. No don’t.
“It was instant trouble melting.” Happy birthday
to Fidel Castro. Now it is all moving. The scrim of mountains
shagged with ice, peel back the frozen lake’s skin
for fish. Fresh water wars. A line graph to heaven
or a pie chart to hell. A list of names, therefore an increase in cases.
Spikes. “That most sensitive of social barometers
the middle class.” I have visited the suburbs
of several countries. Productively yours. Periphery.
FLATTERY (extended)
Caitlyn Main
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but
compliments are the most efficient and
gold is the heaviest and
a grope in the dark is the most direct.
I’ll meet you in the library;
I’ll take one of each.
Darling it takes a great deal of flattery
to furnish such a grand house.
There was a tiger skin rug and martini glasses,
there was a teleprompter, tasteful cufflinks
and a baby swan.
No one had fed the snake for days, for time seemed foggy,
illusive,
something that had once concerned us but no longer held value.
I declared that we had everything we needed - the dinner party couldn’t possibly fail!
We drank firstly from the good crystal and then
from the men’s leather brogues and a milk jug shaped like a cow.
Eventually we drank straight from bottles,
and then
afterwards
from each other’s open palms, messily lapping the bourbon and champagne and pinot noir
and vermouth. There was a low hum of satisfaction beneath the caterwauling and
showboating. A hedonistic current, a sustained murmur of encouragement to us all. Someone
knocked over the last coupe and the glass spoiled the second it struck marble. We felt at peace
we felt in pieces, at least for a while, at least until the booze ran dry and stale, just like the
untouched dinner, a table heavily laden with roasted birds, wilted herbs.
The satisfaction gave way to routine: the repetition of this evening that had hazily occurred
five thousand times before, the only variation to be found in the variety of liquor, or the
particularity of the scandal. We mixed things up by having a screaming competition by the
pool - but this solved nothing as a winner was never determined, despite one of us being a
clear banshee.
I lived as far away from you as possible, given the circumstances: we shared the same
mattress after all. We staked our territories viciously, we prowled the boundaries. By now it
was just you and I, the guests stumbled away from the front lawn and the snake had starved to
death. I feel sorry for the coldest blooded animal pacing in this house.
Communion
Naomi Morris
a palm appears from nowhere / a collar bone / apparition of a thin silver chain / life and love lines / appear
chapped / appear damn’d moisturiser / appear sanitiser / my closeness to a crow / to a pigeon /
consecration / palm glows in the dark / appear tongue / appear cheek / Christ used spittle to cure the blind
/ to reach / to pressure / to palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss / appear on cue / appear after loading screen
/ appear propagation / saved covers of Hustler mag / our words upon words / stacked in blue / in black
affectless joy / trembling pock-marked in our shared terrain / flat / I miss MSN nudges / I miss / I miss / I
miss / I miss my footing / trip over a hole in the ground / find supposed degradation / find erotics as the
opposite of pornography / at least a desire / want / worrying / my intellect is a stone / appear rubber ring /
appear sensual dolphin / appear woman who had sex with dolphin / ask her why / through fear / ask her /
what holiness was found / here / and here / and here / in this wetted blanket of newly formed spring leaves
/ appear blossom as pom-poms / appear Tess / appear nature as whore / appear crystal bell / sheathed in
jean / remembering finding porno in the hollow of a tree / my bedroom curtained by branches / the prairie
dress / the pill / the baby tie your hair back in a long white bow / appear teenage diary / bible glow
Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 2
finally introducing myself after 5 years on youtube
Raian Oliveira
I
i mean that's information
scattered all over my two hundred
three hundred live streams
i'm pretty proud to say in general
by the way my channel that is for studying and working
live streaming while studying
they are studying and watching youtube
i've a procrastination habit
i've been a perfectionist
i've been signing for exams
and that lowered my self-esteem
i didn't like myself in the past
i didn't like that
somehow it worked
that's how i invented study vibes
i still will continue to do this
but as you know i don't have a job
i genuinely enjoy studying
it makes me feel good
i just enjoy gathering information
sometimes you just don't enjoy the things you used to like before
and that can be too ‘cause of poor mental health
and that was basically what i was going on in the past months
so this journal turned a little bit into a talking video more than like
an introduction video what the point really was i just want to
upload this video edited a little bit
maybe there is something else i wanna talk about like for two minutes
give me two more minutes, ok?
II
i've been promising you that i would make a certain video
like how you study for eight hours straight
how you stay focused
how you study for math
how you study for chemistry
all these questions
all these videos
that i was promising to make
and never made
it's not a "procrastination”
basically i'm so hard with myself
when i was thought omg
i already have so many subscribers
my videos have to be flawless
and perfect
i have to have a good meaning
and a good research done before them
i was always faced with me not capable
to make a video properly
or at least in my eyes it wasn't proper
and now i'm getting to a point in my life
where i'm starting to feel like it's ok not be
immediatley good at something
and that's also what i wanna do with this video
is just upload it
and see what happens
and maybe next time i have another video idea
and i'll see what's just gonna happen
but yeah
that's what i wanted to say
in the last two minutes
Poverty Alliance Webinar, 84 words
Emer McGinnity
➢ I don’t have control
➢ I’m using my Chrome book I should have used my
➢ other book
➢ stark, and even more worrying
➢ on screen is two blue and rashy
➢ maps of the UK, disembodied,
➢ one with darker splodges
➢ disproportionately affect
➢ Northern Ireland
➢ we’ll be looking more like
➢ the eighties
➢ or even the thirties
➢ ha ha
➢ dialling down the conditionality
➢ a COBRA for jobs
➢ never wasting a good crisis
➢ baked into employment practice
➢ if you could just switch to the next slide...
➢ that would be great
good day
William Gee
terrible things have happened, and are
not allowed aloud.
to carry trauma and not sleep,
or to be held.
fresh sheets, happy
to be here,
at a healthy capacity and nothing smacks
of beauty quite as much.
lovely day
pieces of ugly morning turning
in your hand. your hand. and sure, the sun,
throbbing as it does at the backs of my eyes
is something. the careful injection of breakfast.
how my skin burns when you touch me,
but you do.
you touch me and it's everything
to go nowhere at all.
A List About My Father
Kushal Poddar
Perchance my knowledge
about my father
has the length of his shorts
especially those he used for
his ever lengthening gym times,
then I smell sweat and think of him;
may be I am not ignorant;
his ebony pipe and sailors cut
tobacco he ceased to smoke when
I, a child, tried to device some good time;
his constant rambling about
my mother's health and mine;
his notebooks filled with detailed
price of vegetables, meat and fish;
the table he broke with his bare fist
angered over something I must
have done; his typewriter,
the one he used to prepare briefs;
his penchant for sports and my failures;
Old Spice, of course; the tales of his adventures
when he escorted his leftist brother
to another state
snaking between policing and policies;
his flipping through my book of poetry not reading really;
his flipping through the same again not reading again.
A Good Age to Go
Rachel Cleverly
Sorry I’ve been not getting used to any of this.
I stay inside and tell my plants I’m proud of them.
I’ve been slipping into my *telephone voice*, especially in person.
I found a fingernail in my laptop the size of a pistachio shell
wedged diagonally between ‘O’ and ‘L’ so my emails begin
‘I hpe this finds yu we’. I can type so fast now it sounds like applause.
Work meetings are on webcam; when my face is a chess move
away from the fit administrator I screenshot, crop out my line manager.
This is the most intimate I’ve been with anyone in months.
It does feel a bit jarring to use the same webcam to call Grandad on his 79th.
It takes him a while to recognise me, but he hasn’t learnt to look at the screen
and I’m disguised in *telephone voice*. He keeps telling me to turn round so I’m like
Oh no, I’m not in the,
I’m not in the same room, Grampy.
And he’s talking about the birds:
I’m watching myself reacting to a massacre
of elderly people I can’t see, residents lost
like unsaved documents. Grampy’s friends
carried off like cursors beyond the screen. He points,
says how Bertie’d been got by the spine,
Scaley bugger but I did like him.
He starts to laugh when my pixelated body squirms,
but the movement brings him back to me.
Only fishes in the pond, he says.
l-l-look the birds they’re pulling they’re
apart they’re pulling he bodies apart they’ve
got them by the spines and they’re pulling the
bodies apart and they’ve got them they’re
pulling the bodies apart they’re pulling pulling
spine and bodies apart they’ve got spines and
them pulling the bodies apart they’ve got them
Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 3
from CAUSTIC NETWORKS
Ollie Tong
1.3
how could I keep ~ the places ~ the piano, its sound ~ the player ~ her fluency ~ a kind of ~ particular person ~ but
swerving ~ slightly away ~ from an outline ~ floating before the treeline ~ bending ~ into digits ~ consistently ~
impressions along ~ the edges ~ of a cracked wall
---
2.10
In the
afternoon the familiar
ring of light belonging
to no language, no alphabet.
---
2.20
I see
my friends as
what remains when
I subtract familiarity away.
---
3.5
first of all
do not react
surely consequences follow
the sun that
moves by gestures
its threatening knife
---
5.13
Whistling is not one of the arts.
Health, art
Business, art
Problems, art
Shallow art
Broad and flat art
Ignorance, art
Trivial art
Factual art
One cannot get into the same bath twice.
---
5.20
The smell of a flower vanishes.
The corners of a mouth abate.
Yes, if you are happy.
You are really happy.
---
6.7
+ Been having opinions again:
- Naturally we're interested in getting reports. Analysis. We are important to us.
- I am fit for work: unwell, depressed and prone to psychological manifestations of greatness. An endowed human being.
- I get good results. I want to enslave.
---
6.12
+ Woke up uncertain if the falling shape in the sky was beautiful. The behaviour of the local stray dogs has begun to
mirror my confession. I am arrived at the frontier between real and simulated thoughts.
Until Then, The Balcony Is Closed
Alex MacDonald
After Siskel & Ebert videos on Youtube
Let’s begin with our regrets: it is cruel
when an aunt is in agony, that’s my complaint.
Whenever I see him, he’s only himself
with other derived airs and thin oils. People are
sitting in front of meals but not eating,
they act with empty cups, yet they need coffee
and somewhere along the hallway,
a focus group wonders if they too should die
of homesickness for forlorn puddings.
What a crummy exit, a waste of good energy
and bad guys’ girlfriends. Here’s a dud
you can smell from down the street. Were we
meant to believe the story of the wind?
I remember horses behind clouds, a lone flute
whistling, genuine waterfall stunts,
all pasted together with paste and images ran
into the field of vision like streakers,
all held with bad editing. And although I liked it,
it’ll turn some off, but that’s fashion,
after a fashion. Until then, the balcony is closed.
All stills are taken from Siskel & Ebert videos
underpinning
gentian rhosa meikleham
women died for this their voices
& women also died for the right to choose
to render the outlines
vague
to let the omissions
sing
i am tired (she said)
pulling apart the fabric of her mantle
my girl
show them that our silence is a foundation
that strengthens with our construction
come into silence
like coming to a clearing in the forest
the pure and stubborn power of the root—
the light coming in
(originally published in speakerspeaker journal)
EXPERIENTIAL GROUP
Tom Betteridge
infant embargo
in the face of yous
me bully beef tin
in the face of yous
now you
also of tin
a jam tin you
a bully beef tin me contained by a jam tin you
caught dead in the air
between launch
and impact
under fear of explosive
influence
yous still
pomegranate-molasses
chatty
NURSERY
at dawn you skirt the range
of liquid storage solutions
and peer through gaunt hedgerows
at the amassed pillow tanks
that corpse into far millet
you drag the lamped hare near dead
along by its twitching feet
that meets your eye before the keeper slaps it
easy to drag now silent across
fuel farm repositories
Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 4
Tuesday Afternoon
Imogen Free
She was not afraid of knives.
No, that melon was eating
out of the palm of her hand!
But the dried ham tasted
of iron and she considered
for several moments
the possibility of cannibalism
as posthumanist ecology.
For dinner, her peels of potato
stand as simple dues
to her maternal blood line,
and calls to say good night
and good morning too.
Tired of never going out,
she moves in, ‘digs deep’,
& you wouldn’t believe
the treasures under her pile
of unopened reviews:
dusty waves, yellow dogears,
teen diaries, postcards she kept
for herself, in shame and secret faith.
For what matters most
on this suddenly radiant Tuesday
are these recollections
such sweet self-storage units!
Even that 2 year old pregnancy test
seems some kind of salvage
its dehydrated pee,
fingerprints for brushing,
traces for the file she’ll never have,
are narrative comforts -
touchstones for wives’ tales.
If only someone would gossip again,
bite, give something to salivate over,
something more salacious
than miniature histories
but no, conspiracy theories of the self
are all that she can muster.
Before sleep, she thanks god for the aliens
because surely she could not
have done this herself.
this particular dyke life (living/recording)
etaïnn zwer
birds
night broke over the city like a black yolk
while Australians flirted
with other Australians deep underground
as the keenest birds begin their lullaby
filling the room with the unbearable
lightness of being without a backpack
something wicked comes to me
as tar-feathered memories
float in and leave the air to crackle
our Sims are getting married
that cat is still in the bins
will someone let that cat out of the bins
and say someone’s let the cat out the bin
and what about all the dead cats
on the internet, and our Sims’ funerals
now what rough beast slouches at the window waiting
to curl its talons round my fingers
like the last McDonald’s receipt
at Christmas time
Alex Noble
when i am becoming essentially
a bin
filled out with the year’s rubbish and refuse to see
this is as anything
i remember then
the little best to know is this
of which
i remain certain:
crocodiles will try to eat you
far less than you’ve been led to believe
and even kangaroos
can sometimes eat a little snow
and listen if goats can climb trees
what more do we need
and did you know i repeat
did you know the banana-iest part of the banana is the worst part
of the banana, really
all i can do
is hold up a spoon to the world and say
look at my spoon
all i can do
is hope
i am always on my last legs
and soon my engine starts again
my laugh sticking out
like a car door in a bike lane
Video Games
Caitlin Stobie
Up late at night wrapped in telephone wires – remember what
desire seemed like?;
Up close in a screen of black we met, that first real-life night,
sneaking out &
Down by the dam; in a friend’s two-man tent our four hands
turned one &
Down was the little bend I showed you how to press (deep in the
boy inside me)
Left to figure girls alone with no cheat codes, I liked how you
never said princess;
Right or not, even the mean things were left unsaved, erased; like
that evening a
Left turn led to flat tyres & for three hours in your dad’s car we
lay unmapped together
Right beneath stars, legs wrapped like broken VCRs (all lips &
fingers willingly lost)
Be it legal or wrong, we played consent by taking turns, being
genderless & free;
A decade later no man matches that game concentration; in my
movie-memory still you
Start clamping close, close, thighs closed, & don’t stop (least not
till I ask)
Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 5
the hammer
Meredith Grace Thompson
there is a hammer on the floor
next to the blue scarf
I have used
to cover the television
soon
I will pick it up
and put it back on the shelf above the coats
at the back door of the house
and I won’t think of it
until I need it again
from ‘notes for presenteeism and sleep’
Fred Carter
i can’t hold more than one thought in the body
long enough to be analogous i can’t
transfer
enough to send
Investing fists of B12 in your health,
Restart
cultivate affections
for palm readers and loan sharks
refilling your tank,
you touch its aching hull
what is an Elsewhere
‘who will index all the reeking foam’
wait up for me, be patient yeah
relentlessly i’m telegraphing
all these feints against the structure
catching hands as self-abasing iterative practice
insist on the asymmetry of every space we make
to every edifice that we oppose
& still, even last year,
you voted in it
all these settlements, these whips
' of our devotions
by which the songs become
less non-compliance more
complaint procedure
if it’s not a form of workerism, tell me
how it’s more than just
doxxing yourself
for credit
what is an actual transverse tactic like
beyond these temporary breaks
in the outside of,
getting thrown, preferring not
jilted and untethered as a mode
utterly overcome, you overran
speech spilling out denial in
a momentary negation of
becoming dissolute
or resolute which
is it
unable to kick into that auto
interpellative torque slow
spreading varicose
like marble
like another sinew in the diaphragm
like liquorice Rizla
‘anyone who says they’re “in it”
but not “of it” is a scam artist’
yet here we are
all these line managers, correctional poetics, or
entropic rackets tending
to exhaustion, only
you keep practicing the moves,
sleepless refusalism’s flaw
less underhanded form
wait up late for you to come bed
i keep up
‘i love you!! oh,
say it with paving stones!!!’
write another day off
in the final hours of screen light
unfiltered water / infiltrated
produce, all
the heavy objectivity of
everyday that reproduces
everything we say
against the work
conditions as
nostalgia for
the work
just say a couple of fuckwords
feel a little
better,
moved to text
hammering tiny shards
off kerbs and slabs
for artless joy
it militates,
it weeps
citations that foment & that
the pronoun i means such
that starting anyway so
poorly, i apologise
to alice notley
in my sleep
i really am
it is
where the need for surplus value contradicts the need for life, the symptom becomes the most palpable expression of this contradiction.
oscillating between pitches of efficiency and rest, recovery takes longer every time and slowly
unconceals itself as such. like somehow reproducing 100%
of life on 80% pay.
all these lines and tendencies, these tiny barricades, they pretty much just talk among themselves now. lauren says
make friends with the non-sovereign. ask yourself how it is
you really gel with non-coherence.
cass says i’m not quite as amoebic as i’d like to think.
Note
‘who will index all the reeking foam’ is from How To Dress Well’s ‘Vacant Boat,’ The Anteroom, 2018 / ‘anyone who says they’re “in it” …’ is Fred Moten, speaking at Fuck You, Pay Us, July 2020 / ‘the symptom’ is partly in reference to the Socialist Patients’ Collective text Turn Fatigue into a Weapon, 1972 / ‘i love you!! oh, …’ was written on the walls of the occupation of Hall A1, Paris Nanterre University, reproduced in Boredom Weeps: Graffiti, Curses, Inscriptions of May 1968, 2018, p. 35 / ‘heavy objectivity’ is in reference to Alfredo M. Bonanno’s ‘Armed Joy,’ 1977 / the Alice Notley poem referenced is ‘Lady Poverty,’ from Mysteries of Small Houses, 1998, pp. 138-9.
STILL LIFE
Natalie Cortez-Klossner
One.
Freedom may be
a moody gift
of acting & creating
out of void.
If you don’t fit
into a category
you roam free
as you please
openly smirking
at the mock boundaries.
As I did circa 2006
free of limits
on my dell 6400
scheming club penguin.
Two.
Aching soul & cheerful character
crammed into a persona
overflowing,
tickling with stoic vibrancy.
Three.
I will fight
Until
Dignity
Is not avant-garde
I will fight
Until
Silence
Is not lost time
I will fight
Until
Desire
Is not excess
I will fight
Until
Idiosyncrasy
Is not censured
I will fight
Until
Opinion
Is not heresy
I will fight
Until
Complexity
Is not condensed
I will fight
Until
Drive
Is not liability
I will fight
Until
Revolution
Is tasted on his lips!
Untitled, Port Ref: TN2/5336432 (For Fred)
Cassandra Troyan
If you let the border take you
that’s the fucking end
I promise you but
I don’t mean detention
I mean everything that comes out on
the other side of the holding cell wall
when I tell you I love you
our bodies outside of care+custody
a juice pouch or 10 pound phone call
beyond the auctioneer’s block
40 pounds, 75, 115, 300 pounds in the hole
offering up our limbs our children to make bail
another rack to get stretched across
“Yes Ma’am, Yes Sir”
No I mean everything that they can’t take from you
can’t get stated interviewed or self-snitched
I mean this fucking vitality
the impossible logic of non-logic
a circuitous regime an erupted colony
these tears are only for me a decoy
until the next burden of doubt
another cold pasta or porridge
from the janitors of the border
sweeping up the hallway
bureaucrats slitting their wrists
with paperwork as
the light’s gone out
the clocks erased
mechanics outsourced and replaced
with maintenance the greatest con of it all
so I’m left with this phone call
and my mentality that
when I said I would do anything for you
I meant it
and mean it still
as the measure of our lives
against a violence
less powerful than our collective grief and joy