Tagvverk

In The City:

In The City,
Iguanas tether bottles
for country
and sugar,
and coffee,
and land,
the trees,
the road,
the beach,
the salt,
the sea.

On every street, dead dogs.

The less traveled road boasts a fungal cactus. Water circulates a parish concerned with the expansion of bodega lightning rods. Remember the turn of the century, when possible, the trust thus made from death footage whose lore sparked Americana. So long for respite, bled dry from rafters: a cause such conquerors made by birth, though some are, all of us, left to ride a wheel in collapse.

Movement is as much a burden
as tradition is. There isn’t more than a
loping animal who lopes with three legs
and shits on the tarmac.

Smoke Pall Malls.
In as much the turning smelt a grocery list,
there are plenty of ways to learn to limp again.

If knees scab, a microwave can do
twice processed open-heart surgeries—
a vein from the shin put on the heart.

Singing soon filled the house. Toothpaste ran bone dry. Javelinas roamed saguaros, poisonous spiders crawled along the bathroom floors, and feral dogs raided trash, their bodies soon mangled by brambles and traffic. From the singing gives way to big talk of past-due corndogs every night when the lights run low

and the windows are blotted
and the drinks are tapped.

I walked through town wearing sweatpants and a robe, whispered about tax liens, property accruement, wool, glass, steel, wood—made it to the foreclosed house and day dreamt about what I’d do if I could buy a house and if I were handier, renovations I’d make: apt shelving, maybe a cabinet in the bathroom where we could put hand towels once we start using hand towels. Another year and these walks will bore me. I’ll stop them and regret what hobbies I could’ve started if I hadn’t tired myself by walking.

The singing voice is pathetic Concrete makes a house
and squeaks With old bills of concrete.
and is built Men asleep in a tent atop concrete is a spectacle
with suppositions in blooming light. They say concrete is a celebration.
hence wind and The meadowland impaled by concrete pillars
a glossary in liters. to hold a concrete bridge above flowing brown water
Earth was replaced with gunk, the trees reach from speaks,
descendant of beetle shell, If I’m to be concrete, I will grow
and concrete is in mating season. flesh around myself so no one knows I’m concrete.

The plants in the neighborhood unfurl wet disgusting petals smushed in raw earth. Blue eggshells are on the ground more and if you’re looking you can see the little baby bird bodies who couldn’t fly smeared on the sidewalk.

I remember a few weeks ago there was a robin’s egg with the shell top cracked off and a bulb of yolk at the bottom. The longer I looked at the yolk bulb the hungrier I got and wondered if I could eat the egg yolk and not get sick. I knew there was an easy way to find out.

Anoint the self
using a jagged tooth
amidst the kind of bender that ruins
a family for an entire generation.

We could be bled dry from rafters, bop in plumed, concussive night. No longer here do we see our mothers’ torrid teeth smoked black at the site of the century’s major turn—a shot soon where children pose (imagined in smiles, the blood of the street) and wade their water pumped thousands from The Source. Hounded they are by the walk. Hundreds of corners, the sound of breath, copper curbs, longitude forthwith in growing, homeopathic boils.

Spotting the crowd, two staff whiff old warehouse smell—dust, obsolete machinery, damp cardboard. A rig hiss brings about the discontinued hard drive cabinet. Simple work for eleven an hour: lift, point, shoot, scan, wrap, move. The beeping headache. The first nice day with the allergies on. I’ve taken my temperature three times. Back home I clean off pubes coated on the toilet.

Myopic efforts differentiate
form. How about one
blood oath to be collected?

Dredge sauce dishes,
call for brutes along curd ridges
and sing away maladies for which
another quantity is longed

except it’s a melted condom beneath your nose
and that’s saying what there is about
the lust of Sunday downtime
when all the chores are done.

Work remains to validate the experience of marketing’s misdirection, which is on par with letting go of moisture and, instead, sees to the sockets in the industrial park. The old couch provides a quality of sleep lacking a spiritual agreement while a historic building in historic registry encapsulates its historic withering tumult on straw.

I continued my day of lifting and walking. The watchtower slinks off one map to get pain right—fan above bolts upon the prairie, my window shattered by a dog’s tooth.

And then a father dies on the coast
where lolls telephone poles.
In Loiza, where he died and all his kids met for the first time,
a horse from San Lorenzo galloped.
They all said he loved concrete.
Concrete claims wanted space.
Concrete highways slice paths
like a sword made of concrete.
Concrete becomes an
animal in the dark
and concrete, porous, absorbs spilled piss and lead paint.
Slabs crumble and concrete needs tar sometimes to feel stuck.
Buildings are concrete.
Pillars are concrete.
Highways, concrete.
This smell of concrete
is the blood in concrete,
the stale concrete water,
strays in rain, holds, cracks in time, fixed with concrete.
Imagine being buried in this ground and then drowned in concrete.
That’s what they’ll say about me.
I feel frail meat wrapped around my knee.
I see plaque illuminating
our great couch, our billboards, our sayings.

from The Academics

I suspect it’s a possum messing up with your womb, their littered intestines mocking pains

for scientific purposes I screen its squeezing mouth, a farmland of reelberries sprouting stench

‘I am to give you some benefit of doubt,’ the hoarseness of my affectionate hand! harvesting

the richest lover from that stingy hole of your stomach’s river! now you are resting for reasons

unknown, murmuring undeserved insults against the concept of advice, ‘a dog is to rescue a

ticking monkey, but that monkey is jumpy! that money he’s grasping with slender fingers of filth!’

well you can always count on animal pixels, warms my digestive system to tell you this

when it is our war I shall speculate further on the compromised role of explosive diarrhea, now

please walk with me to the parking lot of potentially nothing, whipping our beasts’ bruised feet

the possum suspects I am pregnant in its womb, with plain agrarian accuracy I lie beside you

‘O what a beautiful leech of assholes,’ you spread open once, ‘is this how knowledgeable I am?’

a psychologist friend who broke

several ethical codes to allow me

sit in his office listening to clients

cry to him once said he had beef

with ‘not PhD but MDs’ whose offices

were in the new skyscraper

at the center of downtown

when I first met my friend he spent

three hours explaining to me his totality

theory for ‘not human beings but a new

futuristic cyborg’ I visited him

again three years later nothing

has changed except he now gained

new passion for the tech industry because

‘so many Chinese people are

bosses’ I wonder if his association

with power and us being Chinese

had to do with a sense of

impending doom but well

I stopped talking to him for I

have changed my research topic

chair promises our knees ruin what’s down

done throwing dice chances slim the linguistic

relentless lobbying cannibalism to be arranged I

shall be waggling the dog’s illness tans the dog

tail claiming twins are regime of sign change

when I was not writing which was

most of the time I was walking

around making friends

I went to a casino hearing where

some head of a hospital

spoke to the mic about health

benefits of a casino as large

as the entire downtown

‘construction jobs bring

healthcare and healthcare

brings health’ she soon became

the deputy mayor & I

was sitting on the floor outside

watching them shake hands thinking

if there were still things undiscovered

or underarticulated about this

there murmurs were mumbling

not a single round stone kidney

let lone a lamp at noon blinking

pair of references walking to foil

to foil two veracious balls dilly dally

bar chart a doll an uncle vends you

an uncle vends you land ugh

ouching your way out alone handsome?

my friend who sells books on the streets

(his selection ranges from

cancer treatment to the world map

of psychopaths) once whispered

to me his suspicion of the only

Chinese bookstore on the tail end

of Main Street that the owner of this

impossibly resilient book business

must have secret & lucrative

exchanges behind closed

doors ‘or else who could have

paid for that rent?’

I met him at a tenant meeting

that I was too nosy to miss

the advice he gave me

was that I should study Chinese

immigrants’ sexual partnership including

his downstairs neighbor who just

found a boyfriend 30 years older

I said I would possibly consider

this proposal and he left me with

three books that I insisted

I didn’t want:

‘how to manage midlife health

crisis’ ‘the world of wild

cougars’ & ‘metaphysics of moon’

I did visit the owner of the bookstore

who told me neither socialism nor

capitalism has solved the issue of

human kind his suggestion was

for me to get a green card as soon

as possible since I was still

talented like his poet friend who got

translated by a big press & immediately

became an American

insert fluent into a dam’s feather

a pup’s linger

causes fissures of wine’s surface

leather

how how

the reign rains non-stop for a damned

chicken wing

jaywalking to a crab’s crib happy

o’clock

the last friend I want to tell you

about is a home care worker

she asked me about hope

in two occasions one was

in a meeting about her stolen

wages after ten years of

protests the other was after

the mega casino got approved

“is it still hopeful” she asked

she told me I was able to be

a good speaker at rallies

because I was an academic

that if her mom granted her

a chance to go to school

she would end up being

as good as me

in the no casino townhall she took

her time as always wandering

what was required of her

to say & what was lived

for so long that her histories

were circular in accusations

‘all the men in my family gamble’

her lips were very thin & tight

‘all the men in my family lost

all we had’

the next week I

was on the stage doing

what I was good at in

English & she was in the picket

line doing what she had been

doing for years

our eyes met during Chinese

chants & a question wasn’t

there

and won’t be

for the time being

how come a pigsty is the pressing issue of your referendum is beyond me

not everyone is a cyborg modeled after my uncle sitting on a crooked chair in the village

being gifted three million bored hummingbirds is necessary for manipulation

if friend A is an asshole how do I stand by my innocence sitting in friend B’s seat

I met my partner on the weather forecast app because we both believe snow is conspiracy

the other day a purple dog told me I was colorblind but a dog should not be able to speak

the fact that I met my partner on the weather forecast app should persuade you snow is a conspiracy

the world is full of contradictions but I remain steadfastly coherent in times of confusion

here is some Japanese tofu which is completely tangible and realistic

ever since my ex died in Chicago I routinely check his instagram for new information

I love information that’s why I am being tasked to muddle its simplicity professionally

it is completely acceptable that I should be unemployed and deported once I finish this big thing

if you texted me and I never texted back it’s because I felt weird about you not because I was busy with this big thing

currently I’m instructing my uncle to stand up from the crooked chair I envision

his body emits geopolitical insights as I increase the stakes of lying

‘it all depends’ I sculpt this chair deep inside of him

there has never been a language appropriate for this foolish truth between you and me

3am appeared to be the right time doubting
the omnipotence of sleep so I chose to pay
attention to the blue tarp’s late blueness.
there were women sleeping under the steady
hushes outside the spring-infested city hall
whose streets instructed our living orderly.

you can sit down anywhere in the world if you
have a chair. we were sitting down at this
important street corner when a man walked by
starting to yell. ‘who could have worked for how
long you claimed they have worked & not already
have died in the emergency room somewhere.’
he was upset we were sitting down here foreign
-ly. he speculated abt the intention of foreignness.

this city has the biggest manhole known to me,
many tiny hands tickling its possibilities. legend
has it our new mayor sleeps deep down the
snake pit, his legs all tangled up to defend our
sewage. there’s a chance he cries himself to sleep
every night. some like to echo the whimpering.

my mom read a novel during her night shifts
about birds & romance. it was 30 years ago
when the nascency of day was deep in the
belly of my current clock. i grew to be familiar
with her sleeping breaths & teeth’ shuttering
clench. she mistook her own sounds for spa-
rrows, lay awake to imaginary creatures threat
ening our organs’ symphony with rests.

yesterday a spy was revealed after her oldness
gave out enmity. under the urge of confusion I
went to see the puppet. did you see how the
puppet was free the spy-busters whispered to me.
did you see the metal pretending hands? little
wandering time, tripping aunties with hours errand?

the student sits on the seven train, thinking of numbers.

‘I am the epitome of counting,’ she says out loud, not sure if it’s the right address.

‘the world is sorting me out,’ as places fall.

as places fall, the student winds a man’s spit on the night curls

the drowning of a ride’s sudden split, green she sees

light’s vein passing quick

light’s vein passing, wishes make her water known

the student leans in, urinates wickedly

at a sculpture in the middle of everything

at a sculpture in the middle of everything

the student coins

flatters, gleans me

cleans floral means —-

Yore and Lift
were gods

to which days and curses
belonged

Weepers had their Finders
back then

and Firsts had
their Earths

Isotopes had their bonus
neutrons and detritivores

ate up detritus
Stone huts and perfect yurts

surrounded the Seven
Reservoirs whose surfaces

glittered and shifted like
cool practical effects

Back then efforts
were recovered

from the perilous
and forbidden

Temple of Syncretisms
and if not

from there then
from the Temple

of Movements and
if not from there

then from the
Temple of Perfect

Movements where the priests
used to say

Just as Each
also Ever—

the many Odd Ways
also Stillness

Down the Old Glacier
Highway to the crowberry

bushes and the shieldfern
gullies

and down on the other side
of those to Stillness

And on the other side
of Stillness

Negative Stillness
And on the other side

of Negative Stillness
peak compound words

like spacetime braingut
axis heatdeath and

livingproof were
and on the other side

of livingproof
the knight’s hamper

was and still is full of nutrients
and the midquel shed and still

sheds its infrared ingratitude
so lightly

and druids from the future
and dinosaurs from the future

had and have sacred migraines
and on the other side of their sacred

migraines the gardens flex
their pixels

and the algorithms flex
their suggestions

and the usages flex
their farms

and the prototypes flex
their rooms

and the rooms house the brains
of famous mediums

and on the other side
of the famous mediums’ brains

the pressure point of no
return is vulnerable

to ocean spray and all
the ocean spray sprays

in unison and surrounds
the final fant short for fantasy

and the close prox short
for proximity

and the reverse chron
short for chronological

and on the other side
of reverse

chron are
maximum experiences

and maximum sights
and medium laments

and endangered species
and unsolved laments

and impossible laments
and laments from beyond

the forgotten crypt
of the unknown star’s

lagoon and beyond the forgotten
crypt of the unknown star’s

lagoon are gifts
gifts gifts gifts

positions and more gifts
and on the other side

of the gifts is the deepest
known underwater cave

in the world which has a chamber
called New York

and another chamber called
Secret Recipe and another

chamber called Secret
Formula and another

called Secret Ingredient
and another called Secret

Message Secret Code
Secret Word Secret Agent

Secret Police Secret
Base Secret Passage

Secret Garden Secret
Room Silent Letter

Silent Film Silent
Partner Silent Running

Silent Auction Silent
Majority Silent Bob

Silent Treatment Silent
Night and on the other side

of Silent Night is Brood
Cicada gentleness

a failed star that was
here first and the

rare chance to behold
a famous omen

collagen molecules
famous extinct plants

marine plasma
but on the other side

of marine plasma rooms
were out of the question

Rooms had left the room
and topics were showered

with articles and the darkness
was not quite virulent

enough to camouflage
this mesa that time forgot

to include in its listicle
of exotic biases

and on the other side
of the exotic biases

was the presence of a partial
panorama and the phases

of the panorama
but on the other side of the

phases of the panorama
the blue trees aren’t flat

and they aren’t aren’t flat
and they look flat

and they are flat
and there are therefor varieties

of blue tree experience
and on the other side

of the varieties of blue
tree experience is Wishing

Well 2 the sequel to Wishing
Well in which the hero

asks the antihero Through
which blood

does arrival do its
overachieving? To

which the antihero
answers The blood

of desire’s stochastic
process maybe

Or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear maelstrom

at rest or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear

material at rest or perhaps
the blood of the crystal

clear utility at rest
or perhaps the blood

of the crystal clear
compulsion at rest

or perhaps the blood
of the crystal clear

black hole at rest or
perhaps the blood of

two crystal clear black
holes colliding

in the amphitheater
of the so-called firmament at rest

suggested the antihero at last
And on the other side

of the so-called firmament
the antihero went on

All the parties and nowhere
to go except heaven

now must come to an end
for Christmas on the Western

Front and on the other
side of the Western Front

are the fire’s flowers
and the famous rivers

of the famous cities
and the famous substance water

and the famous atom oxygen
and the famous property mystery

and on the other side
of the famous property mystery

heirlooms bob in the calm
Caspian Sea and the Snake

Oil Sea and the one-inch voices
prevail in the library

of microplastics
and on the other side

of the library of microplastics
various schools of eternity

debate in the Temple of Phthalates
and on the other side

of the Temple of Phthalates
there were and continue to be

astronomers who see when
they look up a vast—

and this is remarkable—public
And when they look down

claytonia mercury
greenthread lead

cardoon oganesson
hopniss radon

samphire astatine
tastes allocations

and on the other side
of the tastes and allocations

sitos opson oinos cheetos
and on the other side of the cheetos

there are so-called holdfasts
and so-called redoubts

and so-called dead links
and so-called fixed spells

and so-called rocky planets
and so-called acid grassland moons

and so-called adaptations
and so-called summer nights

and so-called deeds
and so-called songs

and so-called cum jokes
and on the other side

of the so-called cum jokes
there is a special word for surface

that deserves a second chance
and a million year old volcano

crawling with stick insects
reefy water ultraviolet light

hammerhead sharks
paragliders A magical

place the specialists call playing
a sexy game of Go Fish with death

and the managers call
a geode planet sometimes

and other times a list of every known
concept and other times

wildflowers bright Pleistocene
Cerberus meadows of them

and if the wildflowers are always
wilder on the other side

of the Cerberus meadow
and if to pair High

Existentialist Nausea with
like a gag is as enduring

a coping mechanism
as it has been proven to be

why put it to this newfound test?
Why rewrite the labyrinth

when it has closed in around
the self so absolutely any

sudden movement no matter
its source of dysphoria

is a form of solution anyway hmm?
One answer might be felt

in the spirit of the lichen enthusiast’s
dopamine rush or perhaps

in the thrill of prudent and virtuous
betrayal or perhaps in the single

piece of mosaic swallowed
or perhaps it can be felt

in the nursery of the earthquakes
and the uranium sandbaths

the petroleum springs or
perhaps it can felt

in the groundwater
the foxfire the cliffface

the archetypes perhaps
it can even be felt in the

quaking aspen metaphor for everything
that back then sufficed

that back then was called
a sacrifice hearty enough

anxiolytic enough
to subdue gods

like Yore and Lift
gods whose

divine traumas and
divine narcissisms

were earned on
the other side of eternity

where there is no such
thing as medicine

“La connaissance poétique nait le grand silence de la connaissance scientifique.”
–Aimé Césaire, “Poésie et Connaissance”

““Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.”
–Aimé Césaire, “Poetry and Knowledge”

So, you know how scientists recently discovered that the mycelium fungus is basically the internet of trees? (They found that the mycelium’s web-like network under the forest floor transfers information between plants by serving as the connective tissue between root systems such that it enables trees to communicate with each other.)

Well, what if the candida fungus that grows in the human vagina is the internet of uteruses?

It would explain a lot about how periods synchronize, which scientists have yet to explain. I have this friend who every time I hang out with them, no matter what time of the month, I end up getting my period within 24 hours or less. For this reason, I call them a “red bully” both to their face and behind their back. I wouldn’t need to call them this if it weren’t true.

I’ll bet this happens because when our uteruses get together in the same room, the spores of their candida start broadcasting the false message that “the uterus is menstruating” to my candida, until they mirror that broadcast and word spreads to my uterus the false consensus that “the uterus is menstruating” like some kind of Cronenbergian fake news. I’ll bet that’s why I always catch my period whenever I go over to their house.

I asked my friend who is a gynecologist whether I’m right, and she said it’s possible, so…

STUDY FOR SWIMMING HOLE
after Etel Adnan

//
Last time
A prop of air
peals
Against all that has taken place

Salt meadows extra accidentally beautiful
Glass
my hands are full of
Hiving the inner lining
an eye shuts

Done and seen actions
amount to the same
“little more than
a register”
On the draw
Study for swimming hole
Study for hand (reverse)
Discrepant parts of control

They are streaked with this specious transparency
That the furniture I famished will not eat me now
To make the farness varnish
You lay it to rest as you relate it
“Even a meadow
with crow flight and grass fires”
“How remote
the infinite air was
that filled our chests”
Because it costs too much to be human
Everything was certain
as second order representation
in the order of the seconds

//
The exorbitant render
The consensus in the
word cotton
Calls to light
Squat tags

Return to this approximation
that soon exudes
“How to intervene in time”
at least three times
with different emphases
In the body or the sky
A poppy of pink brick
Which is “either stroke or color”
as glass
Forms
a hive that smells
of goat and jasmine

//
You don’t have to paint passage anymore
but being
hermetic to what we call paper
the grass or fat of it
that’s resinous and doesn’t want to scar
Written apart
as such
As from the far off “latest” from the one right here
You are quite captive
You are quite alive
“And hanging over all of this
was the apprehension”

//
To hesitate or grasp
the air
is no longer made of that ment
the dead linger
Seeming whole
as a round

To be reconciled by excelling
Aloft out
The chant tree
Ex
hales
Naked gauges
Inchoate
and so susceptible

They double from a paucity of face
The infinite obligation which the presence to one of the other is

//
As for mirrors
Ways rhyme with ice
All we can do is shake them
Each one makes the same sound
And this is generally regarded as safe
The valley the vocabulary
the great camouflage

To resist the garden
where all trees
are precisely given
an appointment
What has and what has sought as substitute
“A lyrical climate”
Tion as hail
Flower of cell
Or in a moment
Fly le
“There loss”
there “the re sky”

From which you hoped would ebb your perfect complement
The impossibly spoken outgrowth in the balance it fires back
The range of trio in the leeward truce found in others

//
“Nature is oblivious”
“Give me your lipstick”
Give me your streets and suddenly in concert
the “last
on everyone’s lips”
authoring nothing
Our R

Fragments which wipe out the dignity
of the conflict they resolve
The “ous oaks”
in the audience
Won’t take it easy

Like variegated Easter
Lace
palpitates
a fading light

That doable “which”
To graft the desire
it remains
For the voices to look
Where they come from

//
Bent
“philtre”
Bird
leather
Lineation
Final
night in the pool

1^st DnD Character Backstory

I’m Phoenixen Fahlite, Xennie for short
and I’m a sorcerer by birth, a cipher
for my deceased twin sister’s healing quest

my parents are two angels, Enix and Phia
who assisted in trying to solve all living beings’
demands, dilemmas, and wishes

they were doing pretty well
helping to bring Ranunculus Village out of a 504-year-long drought
and restore the natural landscapes,
until they couldn’t help one being even a little bit—a demonic spirit named Olaph

Olaph possesses abilities to enter all realms
within known worlds
and cause interdimensional natural disasters,
including ancestral hurricanes and destructive droughts

when Olaph received intel that Enix and Phia blocked
their most destructive attack on Ranunculus yet,
Olaph captured Enix and took Phia into an inaccessible realm of icy darkness
on a cliff overlooking a glittery gray sea of mysterious liquid

Phia was 9 months pregnant with twins at the time and had to give birth by herself

Olaph put a hex on Phia’s body before placing her there
causing one twin to live and one twin to die
while one spirit joined the other

when the living twin was born
Phia managed to raise her until she was four
Olaph returned to take her away into a spooky realm
a world that became all she knew

the twin is holding the spirit of the other twin
as the “living” twin, I
followed footsteps of angelic ancestors becoming a healer,
constantly confused as to whose ethics I’m following—mine or hers

I would like to figure out a spell or two
to release my sister from my body
so she can be free and / or break the curse Olaph put on all of us
I also want to find my parents and reunite us all,
even if only for a moment in time

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

@round the world in a daz-e

after Prince

i begin singing through my laughter
bending my back flipping out
over equal lines underwater
wading thru nine dandelion roots
still remaining tangled & caressing earth’s core
time zones mapped out in corduroy,
velvet & paisley prints
returning messages to the surface
playing the game telephone
my mom said we would pick them from the backyard
this summer to make dandelion wine
like her mother used to
a ritual tends to tend
more than memories only flicker
sometimes only whine
eye blink one two three times
future me sips then chugs
sweetness i can only imagine
i stay in school
eye avoid the garbage passersby throw at me
i jump on a trampoline so high
eye reach the other side
of an ocean catching
two tamborines mid-air & still
eye paint my footsteps with rose & gold & raspberry lime
i refuse, eye refuse once more
eye rinse what’s mine
i pay the price walking in thru the outdoor

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

laughingstock

hey babe, do you want to join me
in being a laughingstock for the ages?
look, babe, we already are
look, babe, we already are
are they talking behind our backs
are they pointing & laughing are they
at what they virtually see
it’s a gift
being a chameleon of faux pas
for others to bond over
how fun it is to be behind the laughter
being all the rage & bounties dressing up
fitting in a fantasy
being tripped in the hallway
being kicked behind the knees
look, babe, it’s an all-time job for the taking
& with no closure in sight
& with no closure in sight
how dare we speak in emotion
how dare we speak
about the years that bullied us
not just having our fears
but having to walk outside with them
once more,
we, the laughingstock can bet on
being talked about &
gossiped about &
ridiculed in space
how dare they help create the shame
they demand us to get over
look now,
I’m covered in blood and feathers
look now,
I can walk outside alone again but only with a rescued puppy
who joined our laughingstock crew
the days fold & unfold with you & yet
there are bigger issues in the world we should handle
but be still no matter
how much time has passed
no closure in sight, but maybe it’s heard here
listen, with a spectrum of confidence
only cycles of memories they let die or add more wood to
how strange it is for us to choose to laugh with them
& how you’d laugh at me today
even at my dewy face
the streams of release remind me of Dublin rain showers
& how the greens pop into your trains of thought
listen, let’s meet up & have a laugh at them
to guzzle them all down
for the questions they chose not to ask
while they laugh at our limbos & slips
I’ll laugh at myself until
you’re telling me again
I’m the funniest person in fact
that you ever met
yes babe & listen haven’t I proven it
listen, I got some returns left to give
so many people I smiled at
who didn’t smile back
how funny can we get
without trying to start a bit
we can learn a lot from a couch outside in the sun
laying down in front of a laughing crowd
have you ever died before?
have you rolled on the floor laughing?
have you laughed your ass off?
what is a laughingstock to you anyway?
fun or fund you say

good god look
at the indifferent loaf
grey dinner with martini
ice shards rudely clinking
 
i promised to clip his curtains
the dangling lace
color of eggs
 
yes congratulations
to a fantastic daughter
cool cold cash with the lemons
pacing with two vibrators
deciding
 
yes gorgeous
my young womb
tarred and seeded
 
in my memory i'm wearing leggings
praying for his elbow to somehow hit
my breasts
i licked the hollandaise

as a bribe
rearranged the unimportant
flowers, starved
 
married, too!
how ugly

 
 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 
 

the ballroom with paper
anemones hung
up in a stiff display
the punch shivering
in silver bowls
 
a moldy girl
with copper hair and minced meat
freckles
sat moaning in the corner
 
desirous to see the
strange things of the world
sat weeping in the corner

eeeeeeaaaaarrrrrkkkhhhh!
she said
i'm practicing
she said

Imperfection, Achieving It

1

 
For my name-day treat 
last week’s watery pink
 
dawn. Or, let’s examine
a trunk, “a dwindling kit 
of sharps.” Whenever confusion
 
fails to find expression as fear
I rent evidence that shame is here –
has “resulted,” a weasel verb
 
I can’t and can’t not afford.
Feelings as experience the grail

a model of orientation of supreme value ha
o aspirations, compulsions, goals, investigate
unhelpfulness – what is it, extent of – and

how and why shame can’t parade  
(in public with us) the bun it merits, 
false obviously pillow, what is to be an object
in this world if not pillows, I ask

or say, addressing only myself, a duck
sorrow, sorrow, the family of feelings.

2

Things wonderful or 
certainly say

worthwhile, recognizing
 
a sunlit June evening,
not recognizing a stranger,
how, no that
the whole train is relieved when 
one gives up a dream – but why all
 
at once? Post onslaught
my patience reappears

handsomer, I can’t escape
is it setting subtle traps,
call it practice, call it research,
call it a counterjab my
psychic condition worsens
 
patient, I don’t fucking think so,
a patient, I’m a stranger steering
the game into channels malformed by
abstraction, force 2 assert yrself!
 
it worked,
one can have had tonsils

3

So I say to myself you’re no help,

talk of nerves 
 
need not involve
actual pointing. Why, I’ve been used in the presence 
of simulations warmer than you to show 

this happens when one 
veers away along routes 
despite literal tons 
 
of bracken by, ready for mauling.  
Say an egg balanced on one’s head
 
topples off but doesn’t crack. Its
discomfort, down there at one’s feet, is less a form 
 
than a symptom of benevolence – and
a reminder one values most an opponent
most like (one’s image of) oneself. “I wish what
my brother wishes,” Charles V, craving a city.

4

What they’ve cried
this evening over
 
loudspeakers – who knows,
noise. My guess, water is a
 
the least form of powder?
that’s true. However, that’s wrong
 
everything is the same,
it’s all conspired to kill
 
another of my teeth. Dear molar
how seldom really I saw you, yet
 
I am begging you look at me,
nine teeth down,
 
grieving you beneath a sky
loudspeakers occupy. 
 
So, this is shock. No further points
just one: it is total fucking crap
 
I should lose another tooth to this world.

5

Where observation flourishes
drop talk of sense, let us today
my name-day or is it my birthday
or a rare day off
 
acknowledge focus a choice made
unawares, awareness be hanged. And also that
knowing, or agreeing, one is never at liberty to think
avoids a patch (a trap) largely color. Which is to say

description never
gets you the bump, you don’t just win;
having ascribed the world a shape
– for that’s always what you’ve done – 
you’ve lost, or so it seems to me, dying – 
  
the inner workings of the box remain
less beyond than behind reproach,
as here
on the level where one lived.

6

You, you
you and 
 
you, but not you
or you, are in danger, 
risk putting in motion
the whole machinery by means of which
a foul yellow cloud of reproach is made. I’m saying quit
 
operating. Denied the cat-clawed footrest, 
wide open on tile, I’m asking to be closed, the law
demands it, a lie, well my feelings do, “the home appliance”
 
is
an ill-defined unit, I cry. See, open my verbal inhibitions
are set at NONE.

7

Introspection tells us
a golf ball feels these
 
many types of struggle
are too many. Maybe 

when “more” is known, 
the position of the self in space and why
one must supplement introspection, we, or I,
will experience delight understanding
why one must supplement introspection
to know the position of the self in space.
People form habits they do, they do,
 
mine — ignoring the work of a hen
not works of a hen who
rescues, good verb, breakfast, again
and again – and ignoring too 
 
(but badly) the group her hungry eggs consume
If you think about it, it is reassuring
we bystanders can be twisted in a rubber way
not merely optics, not one last
attempt by optics to win the day,

8

After
 
agreement with some entity not joy 
fuck a struggle whose outcome we know
 
near the center of my visual field
to my discomfort I see a glow
 
in my (also-failing) eyes, I drive
I drive away with it, where
 
did I think it would go?

9

All basic junk here – my body, an
obsolete monitor, tag. And we produce only
0.2 pears per year, “no April, no May,”
 
let us now see the continent. O
sunk. I sense however the presence
of a mass, as when a person afraid they
 
might find something
somewhere won’t look. It’s
maybe a whole damn drowned
 
people, infamous for discovering laws
– “wax melts because neurotic” –
whose discovery
 
is fate. Anyway, spied in
a busted monitor, I am beautiful for being 
on my way to having been.

10

Unhelpfully this year’s
“applesauce,” crushed from
our level’s .2 pears
can’t, or won’t, at any rate doesn’t
 
do it. Ashamed and ashamed too
of having pleased myself deploying 
basic, right-out-of-the-box virtue
 
(earlier, in connection with a different matter), I contact an agency
distributing hostility locally. You don’t need identification, ready
monies, or even – they claim – a body; immediate receipt: never any
complications. Other agencies take note! I direct said hostility at proofs
not everything is tolerable. THIS SHOULDN’T NEED PROVING – 

that the assertion itself is
intolerable intolerable.
Angrily I consider my move,
“do you,” I ask myself, “proceed
silently, automatically?” quietly
sure, and, hm not automatically but
 
as if I know the terrain or
as one does having put
pieces together before
dressing, cooking

11

How about now some
talk of objects, fantasies
putting them to cruel
rigged tests as portions
of a world that made 
a self in a field going
up and going down, what is 
going up and going down?
a puny jumble of countable instances
of limbs, hairs, a gut
figured wrongly (for good reason) 
home to the “colossal internal break”
sponsoring useless fantasy, talk.

12

It isn’t my whole self hiding
war-weary amid sorghum
tassels of thought sweeping up crap
and I’m not alone,the deer

want something soft.       

                                            
the future will be like the past
within certain limits electric? Or?
performances may be different
performers are all the same
do that again? do what again?
 
 
*addresses deer*
 
If our whole lives long we’d broadcast for pay
our internal colloquies, and now, flush,
could buy a pair of farewell moods for you,
for me.. Imagine! A wordless state that looks
 
like this yes, yes but without
bodily functions to control while afraid.

13

All these doubloons
but I have warts and so
another’s pity and so
am furious. I’m joking,
I’m broke, can offer
 
this joke molded
on the “war-mood” I remember
and miss. We all felt it.
I’m joking. Here,
have property.
 
What does it mean
do your best?
Does trying to think
count?

14

Morning
ambush 
hedge
scrutiny ineffective.
Conscious tolerance
of pain. Alliance with
magical powers preferable
to disbelief, 
now. Trucks lost,
the desires of trucks, their habits!
Some further defense of objects,
cards
in a hat, other trucks,
the prawns firmly 
placed in the sky as
a unit, a 
constellation.
Then sleep. 

15

Even in this Area
called “mine” by me,
gross with palaces, fountains and
cosmetic blunders galore, interest
in the body tends to usurp
all other interests. “Don’t poke
 
the Area.” My head hurts,
impossible I’ve lost it. 
To be blue in daily traffic…
not not a procedure for finding
epic life. How blue
are you

16

Long live this
obstinate bunker’s 
yellow utility light
I use as a spot. 
 
“What if 
what survives is
personality in
a broad sense” Next
 
see me declaim
my RIDDLE IDEA
a green flowing robe 
on a figure called Night.

Astral Rejection

Sounds fun I’ll be there.
Yet what the odds won’t tell you is it’s an action-comedy
truism how so many kisses… emulsify, diminish …these words for world-
famous secrets
that sit on our hands.

My friends, it’s airborne.
You will know the true test plate when it leaves your microscope:
and it was good then to be that searchlight trained on the bare floor
uncontested.

In the bottom-right corner of all things
my inner mindfulness cop,
vigorously opposed and protected,
isn’t even looking!

Foam hugs the tripwire to sleep.
Joyous ground-rules drag us onstage.
A languid, blasted desert blues hums along with the microwave
in its realism, quantum-heap desiderata, the frosting closing in on humankind.

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Roomful of Equipment

Teeming plainclothes, the infinitesimal can take awhile.
Two dead ends make a straight line.
Is it a sign?
Is what a sign?
Does fate summon us,
or do we just steal its ideas?
Tongue to its glass drops
everything and describes a circle,

II.

the sun is hidden in me.
It seems pretty committed.

The power-mad are always trying to convince everyone their prison is within.
The obvious eats up years of misrecognition.
Fear of loss, fear of gain, fear of too much or not enough of either, fear of no
change,
in figurine death free-associated myself into some kind of foresight…Total
intermittence!
Should we enjoy history? And you and I in the sleep-
walk of wellness
slackly daubed, yet backed by neuroscience—
well I was almost not someone enough once
to see a show of hands when I know one… (A moral best mumbled through a
torn-up storm screen,
what only dust in sunlight can explain.)

No one sees the past coming. III. The dream closes its wrists.

Along a crumpled river, passage of burning tires and garbage;
pulleys and planes for the emblem, force, crime, of motivated hearsay…

I watch reruns backwards on mute.
Paradise of honest mistake.
Everything is someone’s twin.
Only one word in the manual and it’s “switch.”

 
 
 
 
**
 
 
 
 

Peace

for thinner ruins
ran its voice out

whole cloth to
the new past

its outstretched
innards sound

say everything’s
ahead of its time

lumen naturae
reason in its mouth

an ill-fittedness
deliriously green

summer light like
caution tape

licked in sand the
strange unstated

and getting by
on birth alone

as shadows cast us
louder than

a new moon
everywhere and once

who loved government
in its new look

a heartbeat too
far for bodywork

not to wonder in
its secret language

honest-rumored
absolution burning

down the door
took viscera and walked

then I wasn’t
now I’m not

along the circle it
took to get here

a world made
for disbelief

trickle-down dualism
in another half-

wrecked culture
crying with greed

under the sun’s
infected eye

innovation-weary
aching to be fucked

new flesh
in ritual backlash

difficulty swallowing
a vacuum to what it

thinks clean
religious insides

keep the aspect
ratio stretched taut

in the defacing
thirst of its froth

fedback haptic
clickbait looking

backwards both
ways for time

in anger and
togetherness

and music that
seems only to recede

hey great spirit
smiling through

my lab skin
backlit into a-

tonal grayout
fire that makes its

own weather
where a voiceover

in power
fed the air I

knew I needed
to be wrong or

nothing happens
my marrow

my chrome
had long been

different since
the big move

and hungered
from the depths

of a blood-clot
as the selective

evil of attention
trembles off

as pops and skips
people laughing into view

and a peace fell
upon the media

asleep at the top
of its lungs

sucking its loopholes
thinking there’s time

in the world
wherein I’d spin

back apart if we
weren’t already walking

through the bright side
of what none know

breeze of fixative
anciently pixelated

(continuity error)
how to live

what to do
if I couldn’t

maybe I would
in wrought narrows of

where’s this going
where are you

the sky a blue
wall of silence

high-concept
minutiae

in the shape of
what I told

the truth
bleed it back

written such that
you could hear the

world around me
praying through its teeth

lust wincing in
a window’s defense

the mirror in knots
same difference

too much to remember
too much to forget

not to work like that
not to fit in the trap

heat lamp in
broad daylight

soul taped to the
back of his head

spinning threshold
erasure’s guest

in a chaos of worth
light of day of

in fear of enough
and form and color and

the more you dig

the less there is

“that told no tale
and let no witness in”

(cf dark union
tao te ching 56)

hugged awake
we were faithful

we gave each
other birth

psych-rock circle
of light around

how a person
even manages

in little police state
teething its niche it

couldn’t have
happened any other

way because it
didn’t O my pain-

killer missing the
point the right the

wrong gnarl the
wind goes the

way it came
not waving

not drowning
REJECT

ENTERTAINMENT
NO DEATH

NO ANALYSIS
TEXTURES IT

encroaches with project
poetics NO PALLIATIVE

VERSUS THE PERFECT
though killings

are limitless
and pain

without distances
it is possible to concentrate

and still
be useless

wrong in one’s symmetry
breath presets

in the casual
cruelty of personal

space
(neverending

semicircle)
worn to brightness

by the strobe-
lights of home

wet hands
set me down

and feel the sun on
someone’s face

from practice back
to habit back

to accident to under-
brush personals

heard down
its throat

saying you’re not
lost that only images

are lost you are
the wrath and solace of

moonlight on
an open wound

world music within
be why I’m here

until supposedly
final touches collapse

in delirium
middle begin again

homespun dying
for some singsong

in my body art
bit into the cusp

follow the blindspot
regalia loyal haters

follow dusk burst
like noise into law

dry to the touch
in an eon

touch-starved and
still I hesitated

oh today won’t be
yesterday for long

and between deaths
the permanence

of life led me
and when I lived

 
 
 
                                              
what was the difference
foundation crept in

repeating sideways
we never turn around

back to the bandage
chest to the skin

stiffen and wane
in the dead of spring

time doesn’t tell
time does nothing

until the accident
peace is coming

—for Brian Ang

BRICKED is an ongoing XR writing environment bearing witness to memory loss.

In the summer of 2019, my family orchestrated what would later become a final vacation with my grandmother, who had recently been diagnosed with dementia, and my father, who passed shortly thereafter. In the work, an exhaustive inventory of the objects that populated this trip is accompanied by text fragments on the losses that accumulate within both human and technical memory systems. These samples are arranged from assets in development, hung upon Tagvverk white as a defense against forgetting.

This version includes soft citations from Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, Wendy Chun, Hal Foster, N. Katherine Hayles, Habiba Ibrahim, Trevor Owens, Michel Serres, and Mackenzie Wark.