Month: March 2020

For the month of April, we are pleased to present our second Temp Edition: What got left in the future, a multimedia collection of works curated by Robert Balun. A brief statement from Robert about the edition:

When I began asking folks if they wanted to contribute to an online edition, the original call for this project read: This folio will seek to unfold an aesthetics of disruption. The 21st century United States (with its networked, neoliberal, and globalized implications) is a dangerous, precarious, and strange place. In the face of social strife and ecological collapse driven and obscured by capitalism and its hyperreal media environment, how can literature and art adequately disrupt this environment so as to render it sufficiently opaque, able to be grasped and dismantled without reproducing the violence that that cultural work might be seeking to respond to? In what ways are artists and thinkers helping to define new aesthetic theories that are up to these challenges?

The work I received took on a shape of its own and projected itself into the future, and now, with the question of the future so suddenly uncertain and vital. The work I received is:

Of this time yet beyond it, a future seen from a geologic perspective

Of the roar of civilization and the possible quiet connection of the human and the non-human, together, and making a little joke

Of our heavy yet fragile bodies, yet something new, yet something composed of multiple, inadequately describable category

Of futural instructions for 3 disruptor mechanisms towards establishing the linguistic/somatic attempt at symbiotic navigation of the rhizomatic biosphere

Of now but never or not yet or inevitably

Of possibly, something else entirely.

What gets left in the future is, ultimately, a choice, whether it is demanded, built, or imposed, a question of how that future will arrive, what work is required, and by whom that choice will be made.

In this strange and uncertain moment, as one crisis reveals and amplifies another, the question of context, disruption, and what the future will be takes on new resonance and urgency.

The need to demand change and build a just and inclusive alternative is ever more vital. We cannot ‘go back to normal’ when normal is so utterly unresilient, and frankly, catastrophic for so many, even before.

I hope you’ll find these pieces engaging and resonant, posing the question of how one moves through now, and what kind of future one would envision.

Many thanks to Barrett for keeping a place for this folio on Tagvverk’s pages, to each contributor for their time and work, and to you for reading.

with

Bianca Abdi-Boragi
c.franco
TR Brady
ELÆ [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson]

Stand Beside You

You’re the only one I want; no one
has lessened that which I devote
to your exacting quiet, fearfully
dripped, concentrating on the care
you’ve shown in our darkest hours.

Until I can repay you, I’ll love you
wholly and without trepidation.
There is no better prayer than hearing
you on the line, holding me close,
and no clambering of mine will
ever reach you, though I try.

When you’ve seen my face brighten,
I like to hardly pass a day’s turpitude
like stone in spite of fire, if you’ll
please find me again; I’ll find you.

**

Kind

Kind soul with repairs undone
guilt’s riddle taunts made unseen
held onto for pablum and ire
inconceivable without touch
the dealt appearance lunk off
tumult of human suffering
hear my prayer. A lance
lucks across my skull.

Life isn’t right, writ of
incompatible half-angles and
knowledges with, styles that
peck at cards’ fragments to lie
only with you I feel kind finally
let my revulsions kiss clothing,
which means I’m getting better,
which means I’m yours alone.

**

The Mouth

Febrile ruin my living conditions
the unkempt property you sell hollow
so long as it’s worth you leaving town
for days away in hellish submission
to a mouth at full tilt, floating below
your pointed eyes, which agreed to
what was said between us. I’d hold
on to one final racket to give that
evil house its chance, obtain copies
of other mouths, let them know
these resounding promises we made.

I left myself in this state humbling, so
I promise to change. For you, there’s
the division I plant in the future,
because you can’t take back violence,
moreso the memory of said violence.

Promise me sweep of voices’ brackets, each political
will tell you to stay. I’ve already gone far regulated
and no longer piece together money for the blight
starting from the tip of the tongue, and only retracting.

**

Struggle Against

Enemy nightmares pray for them
can’t help that I’m working your control
over in my head. That’s an algebra
for cowards. Fuck my heart;
I’ll go down swinging.

**

Devotee

It’s so simple any day you try
to hang on for a sharing luck
seems awoken fine then hard
I push myself to you nothing
about what except accompli
they should see to return us
to the dross of makeup ours
proven by a script that took
us to have seen another again
the train’s off the track, scare
me I’m belonging with style
all yours, flagrancy increases
one’s feeling disparate, throw
me out and another amounts
to a devoted partner, until
that lasts or doesn’t. It’s a good
show; sadly I identify as luck
reproacher and that’s my lot.
This has been an exacting life.
Goodbye.

**

Interred

The moon rolls its tail in your
singular livelihood. Thanks due
in the curling grass lifts to sharpen
your transparent face, make it
from a piece of paper.

In turns there happens a clutch
sense that I daydream to scale
for stilling my birthday fragmentary
to the self deluded for a sketch
an edge of your adopted nest
occludes peace and tremor,
that which I never thought to ask
as confronting spies’ houses
for a good morning habitable
seeking you out with trivia until
we’re interred with peace passing,
an affection not yet talked about.

I had a life like your face held
on a quiet afternoon, trust choked-up,
let accomplished no trust beheld
to snare the room tallies health
for once attempting a promise
love endures for you, so long
with no choice affection tickets,
sprinkled flower. Obdurate bliss,
I have nothing left to give
except these notes on my hands.

**

Your Voice

Grounds per night light rain
what once expects rediscovered
landing bud, petal, attach
wire underneath this fortune
world at war foil with metaphor
you shared it made us cry,
I know you have a complex
care streaming the sound
without chain spear and bead
of it drops dual pendant
rose of automated voice,
my cries go horned in chains
to buy the dare you offer
me over the phone tonight.

I borrow a single thoughtful
summer afternoon from the purse
you pay me with for drops. Conduct
staid and with the glimpse of talk
when you hold me to you
help in hearing goes lifeless
and all we can do is caress it.

Sap is in a costume, an artifact of
your body so many of us wanted
to seek in art your countenance
offers; many fewer of us caved
for no time and write a secret
I changed by turn of phrase
so you sought to change me,
just tell me. Tonight is open.

**

I Don’t Want

To hold disdain for you
accord frayed and evilly
encountered dog and flock
mine forever and if not,
sheer spite without hope.

Hate picks up if penury
of imagination goes off-kilter
in church, school falls apart
for the bickering student,
life tends to the promise
you decay upon too. I’m
here to wish you the worst
and to not want to destroy
that hand which once put
itself to my forehead, and
told me this would be okay.

**

Redundancy

Spirit of primeval disposition
endure in me your promise
so my strength carries her
through worsening times,
most of which lie ahead.

Had to nudge and nudge
until again you gave me
storage. Had to play in
hoary airs’ mistake clop
so cold very ungiven
the loss of this single ship
pretends to gripe levy loss
warms over but another
captures eventually an enemy
with their own arable periods,
the precondition to estrange
that which persists forgery.

Wrong host, Gordon. Please kill
that fun of strangeness
so that you can handle
that which must be stopped.

Only to settle and know you
through the horror ensuing
like a fax and success for
that which you look back
upon one day, only to realize
you’re the same worries, all the same.

**

This Volatility

Would a world in a power
that you felt reliant on I
give myself its tambour
loud unto grounds’ torment
fuck that world unrequited
the meds you gave pressed
the only one currently wasted?

How do you prepare customs for
that, saying graceful entry
abstains a quiet shine scared stiff
of money good?

Or has my love succumbed
merely to findom?

Sweet stabilizing violence,
sweet nourishing violence,
diamond drain.

**

I Can’t Wait

Submersion is eternal caffeine for
a razorlike burning morning in the dark.
Heartbreak has laid me out again. Still I pray
you surface without terror in your tears.
When I wake up, I’ll send you a star.

I would’ve waited; I will still
with this handy cloister of topics
and a small studio. Currents here
belong to the wefting of light as you
catch it, the sunlight on your face lasts
one more prosaic day, turning over anger
for homebound crushes, fixations endured
though in myself I’ll have a place to furrow.

Hardened, we’d never get into your pain
at this point with real affections,
with said affection though difference
gets lost between us. I can’t sleep again, though
waiting to wait’s a vanity of the unknown,
I assure myself. I should forsake
reviewing this for you. Timeless anyways.
Today I’ll send you a star and then another.

Without you to hold voice, foot
I can’t like how small this fortitude is, really.

All I wish for you, I don’t know,
you can only await what you love.

**

Coupling

Through my driest complaints
I turned to your saintly till,
acceptance, ratiocinations
plain as sky, sleeping lightly
and seeing too much. Hesitation
depreciates kisses, their root causes
connive new means to suit lacquer
so blue to only enrich bluer prints,
then vanity’s specter so pledges
us good circuitry. I’ll
endear plainly to your scarring.

No privilege speaks to mercy
like those waters made to lure life,
the receptive hand of a measure
surrounding trust, immovably captive,
spurning its sleeplessness for company.

Wake on me, turn over, curl up.
Do what you will; I’ll find you
there serenely still.

**

In Sad Reconnaissance

That which made you
what you were, familiar,
you outlined the things I
could compile for a time,
limited tender compensation
for disagreement’s pitiful scrub,
someone unworthy of a kiss. To be held,
instead, however, cables management to stay
who seemed to work until they medicate
yet can’t “tender into” their cabalistic check.

Would it stifle your attention so slow
to give me a response, meet me waiting
for the night to rescind our mediated transport
just once so I could see and hold you, if again
for a walk in the world you gave me once, and
so briefly. Just because this seems nice enough
and weird to happen, I append a final gift,
one final gift to you, and it’s whispered:

When you sleep tonight, know we know
one another until time ends, now and forever.

**

Always You

It was always you
who stole me from the start
ankles
I replay this sincerity and
it refreshes a plenitude incanted
a test I shouldn’t have to say it
and force myself to for you
because you seem to love
to hear this sternness and
make fun of myself I hate
candor and can’t help that.

Law of laws intent no appearance
death always happens between its
deaths forgot so you let go, I don’t
through us really not until the next
time we get to talk serenity
and cross-examination. When first
did you know you loved me?
Was it only that time talking?
Pour until each finish, I want
you a rote lamp to read by,
foment of the replays I love
to see you through each night.

When I observe myself childlike
that helps sort my ending, send
me the reflection I had to take on
you gave me that to abet my own,
please don’t stop talking ever I—
minutes apart feel hard, now worlds
encounter you and still you mine
the appreciation you’re deserving of.

Thinking doesn’t stop difficult times
until plenitude happens to them, liars
and visibility sees us undo ourselves.

Diminished senses, I want
to give you over and again
until one necklace plans dying.

SAFE CONDUCT

we had three tasks:
start, keep starting,
never end

the plan was to stop
speaking altogether
— this was the law
we labored under

X grows restless
in their chair —
the room leans on us,
adjusts its weight
as if subjected to
a set of rules
never made explicit

like a string, the room tugs

one leg rubs against the other,
everything tingles
— your face flush
with a specific sadness
of something you don’t know

someone makes use of my resistance;
it shows them their content

none of this was pleasant

we had been advised
to stay present,
although what this means
remains contestable

we envied a capacity for anger
witnessed in others
(our own passions often
prematurely coil
into quiet resentment,
waiting for an opportune
time to make itself known)

one of us wanted only to repeat certain words:
fuck you becomes fuck this becomes fuck me
becomes we’re fucking in dreams

when asked to be specific,
i could only clench my jaw

in any case, there’s more
to rooms than words

bruce,

against my better judgment
i want to be held by you,
curled up in the curved hull of a boat
here enters the superb puberty of the group

///

little j cites a strong desire
to burrow inside bruce’s chest —
make a home in his hollow,
take shelter in his ribs

bruce, unsurprisingly,
doesn’t know how to
take this proposition

the image recurs in dreams for weeks,
gradually becoming more erotic in nature

the imagined interior of bruce’s chest
oscillates between feeling cozy, domestic,
claustrophobic, and eventually blatantly sexualized

bruce opens his mouth,
i find a pearl —
no tooth … no pearl,
nestled under the tongue …
I reach in, take it from
his mouth, put it in mine
and swallow

i flip my hair,
pretending to be casual

try to picture the conversation
that never began
but was always particular

just doing my job,
an expert at
crying on vacation

bruce used to dream
this much we know

/ the morning of bruce

coffee warm, bread crumbs
just below the lower lip,
caught in the stubble

daddy’s had a hard night’s sleep
his head is killing him

this is incorrect
because it sounds like a story
but isn’t

i can’t tell you what it’s like
to be in rooms with bruce

whatever we said about him
we said about ourselves —
we love groups because they
pose impossible questions:

how can you be what i need?

how can this not be so awkward?

how can i of all people
take control of this situation?

the object isn’t fixed
we are nervous and bored

///

stucco, glass, cement, dust,
fluorescent bulb,
wilting bougainvillea

under the chair, more chair

under the room, more room

our research is horizontal
— we scan bruce for clues,
yet he performs nothing
but rage and boredom

the apparent antagonism of our speech,
lacking an object of attachment,
enters the room as chair, as wall, as floor,
and so on until it again reaches bruce
and self combusts

we pool our
gestures together —
idle communication
just beyond reach

here’s what we already know:

bruce has been elected
“all that which we hate
most in this world”

a poster hangs in my room that reads:

“you are (freed from) myself”

this is literal

///

something about
the erotic promise
of spatial discomfort

something about
the inevitability
of failure

suppose i use my
attraction as a kind
of telescope?

suppose our grammars
of restraint become
shapeless?

a means to bury the claim
of uselessness under
its own impossibility

dreamt rather than seen,
mis-seen due to
pressures producing
the dream

go home bruce

leave me alone,
i don’t want to
play games anymore

we want to be
fully received

to establish no rules
of procedure

to arrive with carefully
prepared statements

to speak only
when spoken to

to start with
a personal difficulty

to unravel affliction

to keep the goodness
of the group isolated
from its badness

to attend to what
hasn’t happened

what won’t ever
not happen

when i say i could
use some lunch
i mean i want to
abolish this room
and all rooms like it

when i say i want
to move this chair
i mean i want to
destroy the powerful

or at least that which
makes the powerful
possible

///

here i am
in a room
in los angeles

waffling
in the shadow
of my own devices

sunset boulevard
keeps going

it’s still going

some kind of art thing
some kind of art experience

bruce,
i’m having an
art experience

all hail the high priestess
of professional repression,
the room explains itself

call it a hunch
call it mother
call it the loss
of what we
came here for

bruce,
have your hands
ever spoken to you?

let me ask you this:
have you ever had the thought
that your precious sweater
won’t protect you here?

i can feel the last
drops of good will
draining from my
boy scout pouch,
my timidity pooling
at your ankles

bruce,
if i learned anything
from proust it’s that
life is a series of rooms
occupied with others

maladaptive sleuth in the cracks

late bloomer in the crevices

i thought i could
stop stuttering but
i stopped starting

i can’t go on
i can’t go on
and on and on

i don’t mean
to sound bitter
because i’m not
bitter

i just feel bruce
deeply

///

our consultant claims
the head is only
stuck to the
mouth

i watch the proceedings
from within my own chest,
peering out between
horizontal bars of rib

the transition from intra-chest
to extra-chest experience
becomes prototype for all chronology

it was an addition problem

we could grasp that
one joins another when
both are the same,

but how are they added
up when different?

partial inhibitions
of this faculty produced
interest in geography,
orientation

one starts to smile,
but finds they are
smiling at a stranger…

embarrassing …
to be legible to a room
not in it

as in let’s
send an ambassador

as in stop
thinking my thoughts

group-as-mother
group-as-bottom
group-as-enemy
group-as-dom
group-as-key-witness
group-as-the-new

group assumes nothing
and desires everything

bruce,
i want to think
you in reverse

i can’t tell you what it’s like
to be in rooms with groups