The Ways of the Monster

THE WAYS OF THE MONSTER

JAY BESEMER the operating system print//document

THE WAYS OF THE MONSTER

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contents

[part one] 7

[part two] 55

[part three] 93

[part one]

| /// 9 /// Speak & be known but as what & by what? Make this like why, & shed it. & shed why, this like Make what? by & what as Speak but & be known I-word small as a maggot takes hold, packs the light into a deft animal sincere as wrong. as wrong. animal sincere a deft into the packs light takes hold, small a maggot as I-word Some of a body’s things taken to extreme as though a vision had only one source-eye. source-eye. one only had a vision though as extreme taken to things a body’s of Some What is being said & from what mouth? what & from being said is What How to understand heavy little word I? word little heavy understand to How \\\ 10 \\\ | I’m aman of people, the but people? which Juicy little nicety, don’t you step on hope. Today Ipractice avast hunger. Territorial eye, registered as pixels on adying Jumbotron. Today Ipractice holding my breath. Knowing some embroidered apron, handwork press. Non-freeze pattern insound registered as pixels on a[]. That isn’trightthe opus. sayTo [], and mean it. | /// 11 /// possibilities. possibilities. Coat our thighs with orange peel. Irrational behavior. peel. Irrational thighs orange with Coat our We dip our hands into troughs of blood, smear our faces with it. it. faces with our blood, smear of troughs into hands our dip We Life swirls in confusion, bastes itself in its own juices. own in its itself bastes in confusion, swirls Life

Mistakes get made. Families increase exponentially. Algae blooms choke out any other any out choke Algae blooms exponentially. increase Families made. get Mistakes Contact points corroded with sugar & aspic, exuding neurotransmitters. exuding aspic, & sugar with corroded points Contact That pretty leaning toward the pastries. That dialogue wet & between the pastries.That dry. toward leaning pretty That When in degrees of adjustment & focus the shortness of breath distracts our frail reasoning. distracts our breath of & focus the shortness adjustment of in degrees When \\\ 12 \\\ | How Ihaven’t but swimming indecades been somehowthe never water. left Pitting fragments &adjustments against singularities of certitude. Have to wonder what that like, looks how meaning gets assigned there, deliberate &the If Ismoke this in your face that means you owe me. In fairness, ifnot inpractice, gap the listening between we’re so &looking, told. There’ssound.the It’s a mud pie the side to the of head. choice to turn away from delusion. | /// 13 /// the horrible violence of my fear. my of violence the horrible

What is mourned is not the cage but the tenderness I must keep from beloved friends, like beloved from keep I must the tenderness but the cage not is mourned is What I see my cruelty, the ruthless blankness of rage. of the ruthless blankness cruelty, I see my Sometimes all that is left is to take comfort in the part of speech that speechgrows. of in the part that to comfort take is left is allSometimes that one. What is not permitted a man who wants to be perceived as one among many, as many within within many as many, among one as be to perceived who wants a man permitted not is What What is mourned is not the cage but what was allowed to slip between its bars. between its slip to allowed was what but the cage not is mourned is What \\\ 14 \\\ | The averagethingsthethat all of once quantified me forothers, now converted to obsolete There is a namethat oncegiven was to me. that’s Maybe the one. I awake itching &dimly remembering aplan or aname. I awake at where wall something the always always starts, its sets sights on something else dayEvery Iawake instantly catapulted into place the of living where adjustment is un-provable theorem. just over my shoulder. inescapable &unending. | /// 15 /// safes. safes. Make payment as demanded from one pocket to the other. pocket to one from demanded as payment Make Make you a promise without a schedule. without a promise you Make

Betweening on paper made criminal so we each make our differences & crack your & files your & crack differences criminal our made make each so paper Betweening we on Nothing is easy. The words are absent. The gold gold stillasleepsafe. inthe The absent. are words The easy. is Nothing Today’s moan ringing in our ears, tonight’s moon working early. working moon tonight’s ears, in our ringing moan Today’s Long apologies pulled from the face as a protective measure. a protective the face as pulled from apologies Long \\\ 16 \\\ | Or look atOr look to absence, differ. begin If love vacates environs the whatthe is leftin picture? Look for thepattern.the in subject We live also inside of earths our making &adapting. Description can’t prediction, be amaze of conditions we wander as ants wander their Some tyranny happens slowly, afaceat window the or apat on back. the homes &habits. | /// 17 /// as though disappointment itself were the goal. were itself disappointment though as terrified of the want. Still so intimidated by hope. by Still so intimidated of terrified want. the There must be something else. must be something There No mere mess to clean up but a whole abattoir of pleasures butchered. butchered. pleasures of abattoir a whole but up clean to mess mere No

Strange failure, disappointed cart placed well before the horse that might take us out of it, it, of out take us might that the horse before cart placed well disappointed failure, Strange

Here’s the same old rift between the thing desired & the movement toward it. Stillit. so toward riftmovement & old thethe same desired between the thing Here’s All stop. Hesitation on the edge of action. of the edge on Hesitation All stop. \\\ 18 \\\ | The hoop of prefrontal work,thewingthat doesn’t close. What you understand is not what Iam. What you fail to understand. Evaluate my rightness as acandidate, recruit, anew atarget demographic. Love my aggression. Spy on me, you. Ibeg Talk to me. Everything we know is altered process. inthe Love my aggression &my little star-flavored openings. | /// 19 /// We are only two little lights. What is our way now? way our is What lights. little two only are We Through the window the sky’s voice comes. The emergency sound, a basket of rattlesnakes. rattlesnakes. of abasket sound, emergency The comes. voice sky’s the window the Through Take a harness from the hook & rub it against your cheek. The ring of keys. My open fly. openfly. My keys. of The ring cheek. your against & rub the hook it from a harness Take There are many ways to walk from here to here. There are many maps. many are There here. to here to walk from ways many are There Shut away with the wolf cub & the pale drum of blistering desert, the bin of beads.desert, of cub & the pale the bin blistering the drum wolf with of away Shut But in a way that could mean freedom. mean could that in a way But \\\ 20 \\\ | In aword’s space afire of movement potential.is contained is else everything & timeThe for dismissal passed has or has not yet come. Once Iwas achild but Iam no longer. Once Iwas achild. Yes, Iadmit to that. White hair &staring blue eyestoo for my face, Punishment many takes forms. Idon’t have enough for wrists world the all to slap. disgrace. That’s incorrect,peoplesay. kind A thing, likewoo-woo dismissed of a subaltern in The wake the action of spreadspastthe in as future.the well as a procession from one to next. the fall | /// 21 /// sureness than doubt. doubt. than sureness want. Let’s move on. move Let’s

See, next to me you are obviously solid in your position. No questions asked. Bigger Bigger asked. questions No position. solid in your obviously are you See, me to next

Yes, I’m only doing this to make you uncomfortable but you can turn that into a selfie if you a selfie if into that turn can you but uncomfortable you make this to doing only I’m Yes, Stumble through a barrage of names & honorifics & facial expressions. & honorifics names of a barrage through Stumble misapprehension. misapprehension. You need this. The things you watch for, my chaotic movements, the vocal the idiocyof movements, chaotic my for, watch you need this. The things You \\\ 22 \\\ | Arrested, crowned with vines, placating as anursery. Run from noise like adog&arrive thereby insome other lineage. &abilitiesLicenses noted. Cargo &applied sorted to tariff. This mark the on hand,thisthing. dear Car, aspiration bank, of. Irritation ways. The that terrible phrases make you. Covered inpotatoes, eloquence, differentiationpocket like ina adream book. | /// 23 /// pasting labels to briskets palm oil a spiny spiny deer skull. spiny palm a spiny oil briskets to labels pasting Now what are the names of those bones? Tell me. those Tell bones? of the names are what Now Peril from the soles of the feet on up. on the feet the soles of from Peril Take big turkey wing in hand, lick the feathers down in a postal way. in a postal down way. the feathers lick in hand, wing turkey big Take The emphasis on tremble, the odor of pillbug. of the odor on tremble, emphasis The

Many kinds, some are not from within. Peril a parlor of predators demanding all say yes, yes, all say demanding predators of a parlor Peril within. from not are some kinds, Many Orbit skull like moths orbit lamp, replete as a barrel of eels. of a barrel as replete lamp, orbit moths like skull Orbit Peril, many kinds. many Peril, \\\ 24 \\\ | Wearable improves data device productivity where so were you my fine fellowwhere & Makes bonny bonny sound travel, coursing hares, the klepto-crypto-governmental nodes. classroom. Time stomach inthe grows loud, abeard of stones &walnuts slaps chest the like a sociopathicThe dugout never morethan a hall full of mirrors. thank youI’ll to keep offthe nipples the & questing. No waterboard, no teawith Uncle Values. was your umbilical rot, passive the voice you haul from garage to garage? | /// 25 /// aqueducts & exchange of capital? of & exchange aqueducts Honor yourself, for I do you no dishonor. no I do you for yourself, Honor If I exist unchecked, why must that hurt you? Recognition is painful but not harmful. not painful is but Recognition you? hurt that must why unchecked, I exist If That I, your monster, am reallyyou? unlike am monster, your I, That value? value? How can you keep pretending that the digital thumb has meaning? That your currencyhas your That meaning? has the digital thumb that pretending keep you can How How can a person ever again be the equal ends? & sign ever again a person between can means How If I exist unchecked how can you insist that your offspring do your bidding? your do offspring your that insist you can how unchecked I exist If

If I exist unchecked how can you ever reproduce? How can you maintain the card games & games the card maintain you can How ever reproduce? you can how unchecked I exist If \\\ 26 \\\ | I’m not lost or confused. Imay atraitor well be but Idolive here &love place this just like Is it of because Iam who or I’m who about to? Orsome of sort supposed-to-be Inever atLook names the to know Iused &wonder door ifthe really is closing &ifit is, why. My reservations under old the name, banked up body like afire aroundthe new. Freeze outside gates the as shutters the click. What takes. this all energy Solve problems of inclusion by putting myself picture, inthe asoftlanding resultingfrom you. was quite? a soft opening. Jargon makes mud pies. | /// 27 /// tin, haunting & cold. & cold. tin,haunting One cry left at the bottom of the throat & it is somehow enough. is it somehow & of the throat cryOne at the bottom left Lives not extinguished but lost to fear & shame, to incomprehensible obedience. incomprehensible to & shame, fear to lost but extinguished not Lives Two palms pressed to the earth. Blue eyes turned to fierce gems. fierce to eyes turned the earth. to Blue palms pressed Two Find the way. Find the silence denied. Find the way. Find

Today the day of exile when silence is forbidden. A ghostly horse & carriage escapes from a escapes from & carriage horse A ghostly exile when forbidden. silence is of the day Today Displacement steeped green with luminous sorrow. steeped luminous with green Displacement Waking up. Waking \\\ 28 \\\ | Indifferent flesh carried around an empty breath, unacquainted thought.with ofA wall dull eyes watches, bored by suffering. ofCrust hatred on collects aface, ashell of tainted sugar. frightThe populace, the of questionsthat amountpounded to unmaking intosemi-person The doll of blemishes sits to waiteager for blame,tasty exorcism a pushed into it. like studs into apole. | /// 29 /// absolute inadequacy. inadequacy. absolute lump of salt in a seed salt of bank. lump Count on us to paint you sunny & good. Wrong. sunny you paint to us on Count

Without a single vertebra to call your own, power false in the mind, disguising your own own your false disguising in the mind, power own, call to your vertebra a single Without Disintegrate these people make them helpless be the lord of everything. of bethe lord them these helpless make people Disintegrate The voice scabs over & sinks below ground & that’s fine with him. fine & that’s ground & sinks over below scabs voice The No shout can be loud enough in this in din. enough be can loud shout No

A little dollar boy driven by fuck by battery acid running away from the news that he is a is he the news that from acid running battery away fuck by by driven boy dollar A little How this happens. Temper chaos with a little bed, a little noise caught in the cheek. caught noise bed, a little little a with chaos Temper this happens. How Blurt & burn, in between as decision gets made. gets in between burn, & decision as Blurt \\\ 30 \\\ | Spotted knife of gaping the trap. Some thicklegingabardine. When we listen we hear what? Mice. False bats trembling trees inthe as wind comes the up. theThewill waterof the din or else of change. &others.Beings Adult solitary, males, attendant to territory. | /// 31 /// your hands at work in your center. in your work at hands your You have your eye on some mighty aura. How hopeful it is to be to is wrong! hopeful it How aura. mighty some on eye your have You

Everything in the body matters. The light that licks the skin of your cheek. The soft need of soft Theneed cheek. your of skin the licks that light The in theEverything body matters. When you breathe the blood reaches out to the air that holds you. holds that the air to out theblood reaches breathe you When When you breathe listen for the horses in your chest. your in the horses for listen breathe you When Don’t wish, don’t sit in a corner out of reach of the sky. of reach of out in a corner sit don’t wish, Don’t The shapes you’ve been trained to watch out for. out to watch been trained you’ve shapes The You have your eye on that implacable enemy, seven-ringed event & surroundings to map. map. to & surroundings seven-ringed event enemy, implacable that on eye your have You \\\ 32 \\\ | The fuckThe of it. Stretch of drawnroad onto flesh. Acne, hair. Sanity inajaw &backlighting. bastard.tropeThe this exposed Alligatorof albinobed, in & stretching. me. Million for uses Purpose thing/dude. Straight with straight people obsessed women binding breasts their for Passing art. as men The yaw of cinder tossed overbalcony, a turkey fatrubbing rubbing dollar.sea palms & in The way me bagarms & knives.you Purpose of purpose. The compulsive function.affection The way you mate, & areboring. for money etc., returning presets to once factory get what they want. they | /// 33 /// darling? My tyrant dance? dance? tyrant My darling? based & sustainable? Something like love, something like love wiped off your menu. your wiped off love like something love, like Something

Is this a hidden-camera show? You want I should navigate my flap-fronts at you, little little you, at flap-fronts my navigate I should want You show? this a hidden-camera Is

What could you want with me? Am I made of diamonds or angus beef? angus or diamonds of I made Am me? with I Portland- Am want you could What killers. You’ve got a horse, you’ve got a different color. You’ve got a sideline in artisanalplanet- in a sideline got You’ve color. a different got you’ve a horse, got You’ve Like some sausage exposé, two-tiered, noise & smell. noise exposé, two-tiered, sausage Like some Why would I identify as your goddamn creamy goodness? creamy goddamn your I identify as would Why \\\ 34 \\\ | The dial The dial of definition drained all power. of If Iam afabrication, hand? whose If Iam asentence what what then, If then? Iam aman, what then? I drain my sources, my withering glare. I want to move slowly &with great forethought. bardsThe sit empathicallypatient & alert in preparedness. Dread creates weariness. Ihave my taken muscles inhand &given notice. Tomorrow, cage, deep brimming deep causal sequence. | /// 35 /// wide, to gasp in pain for the sacrifice of older intimacies. theof sacrifice for in pain gasp to wide, So few permissible to touch, so few mouths to take my word. take my to so mouths few So touch, to permissible few The price of inclusion is to erupt in sticks & stones & chitin. chitin. & stones & sticks in to erupt is of inclusion price The

A vast boa of yearning curves behind the sacrum, pushes me here & there with arms spread spread arms with curves & there boa yearning A vast here me of behind the sacrum, pushes A confrontation with that family of hidden expectations. of family that with A confrontation These questions asked, always a variation on a theme. a variation always asked, questions These When in the eye of the beholder I have no idea what to do. to idea no what I have the beholder in the eye of When \\\ 36 \\\ | No posture eversubmissive enough. There is no end to it. No shout made can clear everbe enough. You must kidding me, be to assume it has no effect on body.my These murderedposterthe men &I, formerlyknown freedom. as Some endowed to person licensed tell you what you are &to make you that be to justify Time fist &the &obedience of authoritybeneath yourjaw. Chokehold. Wait for to this become that. their actions their upon you. | /// 37 /// just can’t admit it. it. admit can’t just anymore, it just can’t. just it anymore, Move along from one obligation to the next. Rust will consume us all us time. in no will consume Rust the next. to obligation one from along Move Strung like a runner bean onto its support. its a runner like beanStrung onto

Don’t you know how that feels? That sense of failure in plain view, everyone knows it & you it & everyone knows view, plain in of failure sense That feels? that how know you Don’t

Every window about to die outward raining itself onto the street because it just can’t can’t just because it the street onto itself raining die outward to about Every window Descriptors possessing tenses, tensions & why not? Everything else does Everything these not? days. & why tensions tenses, possessing Descriptors Strung: a bow maybe or a lute or what if a reference to a past position or state of strength? of state or position a past to if a reference what or a lute maybe or a bow Strung: \\\ 38 \\\ | Fear &desire are same the thing &no language holds that pledge eyes make. the There is a question impliedthat in strange moment, a tongue licking doubtful lips. Who is encumbered here, one the looking or one the almost-seen? What is it, that sly little way ofglance looking? Thethat bleeds. | /// 39 /// ordered to die. die. to ordered sidewalk. the on chalk drawing a child’s than protected less humanity, erased from man A destroyed A populace with hands lifted. A populace kneeling in the street. A populace stripped & A street. in populace the kneeling A lifted. populace hands with A populace The bag behind which the imperative is hidden. imperative The bag the which behind Try to find the departmental policy paper. Institutionalization of the means of harm. of means of the Institutionalization departmental find the policy to paper. Try Try to find the snap of the Taser in all this. of the snap find the to Try Pain, annoyance in suggestive tones. in suggestive annoyance Pain, \\\ 40 \\\ | Automated matchstick aerial errors from here to eternity like avampiric come idea home at Is it any wonder everybody’s worms while eyes get &smaller bite, smaller mechanized Some here sit still inthat tent &muster, rocking forward &back with thumbs their on their Time was, any little piece of shit could recite jingo the jingo way &feel it right here, here in These storiesbeloved landfill of boxesbattery lusting for corroboration. Stamp of approval, tree of pain. bisected cherry cosigning apocryphal the last to stay. to last licking hair taking offthe top,the interim? in apples. heroicthe breast. Meantbetween man diff the &less-than, to be not American. | /// 41 /// reproduce. You should know this by now. this by know should You reproduce. demographic crosswinds. demographic Placed against the skull at the occipital overhang, humming. overhang, the occipital at the skull Placed against Accept this theory tendered like a slip of flesh, an engine. an engine. flesh, of this theory a slip like tendered Accept Look at me will you? See my rhizome down around my ankles. my around down rhizome See will me Look you? my at

All right, I’m made of money, which is why I never make any. This entity does not doesnot entity This any. make I never why which is money, of made All I’m right, The point is, I’m history. I’m is, The point

This mulligatawny of mine drowns out the pumpkin fucking spice of latter-day of latter-day spice fucking pumpkin the out drowns of mine mulligatawny This Get in a circle & duck duck goose. duck & duck Get in a circle The pangolin that beats in my ribcage says you’ve crossed line. crossed the you’ve my ribcage says in beats that The pangolin I don’t like your media, your hypertrophy. media, your your like I don’t \\\ 42 \\\ | Love toward walking you, hands out, forward. palms This love inacity walking walking, builtwithtable salt, backsour striped by whips.rosebud No danger from us, we are only marginalia. Mutually assured irrelevancies. The silence one pressesbeneath one’s coat like contraband.Clandestine poetry,space of Travel inwords alongside another travels who inwords. ofA species love for walking. walking, walking, In it now, like asludge field. surveillance. Printablesurveillance. guns to shoot plenty. | /// 43 /// on a dormant tree. tree. a dormant on Sheaf of muskets driven into the ground. A bomb filledstarlight. A bomb with the ground. into driven muskets of Sheaf Always one last fruit in the bowl, to force the hand around. the hand force fruit to last in the bowl, one Always The trial without resolution totaling its thick testimony, its dust & nails. & dust its testimony, its thick totaling resolution The trial without of the past. sun yet tried & empty not the choices but poison not are These that These you lean into, a wind of a moment or a choice like the lost gloves of last year’s leaves leaves year’s of last lost gloves like the choice or a moment of a a wind into, lean you These \\\ 44 \\\ | Thought of youbecause youalways so many had questions.So hardily enveloping those forcesCan these or collect extinguish or sometimes know? Illuminate corners the of drought the at least. Want to tell me what it is I’m holding? IgoEverywhere Iam that suspicious package posters tell you to watch for. When you will me look eye &accept inthe that Iam &what who Isay Iam? Touch it into open. Listen. When it enough? be will Emanations of tiny rage. The question of anger & packet a its uses, made of heavy ironpaper holding dust of Saw &thought this of you. bones of bell. happenstance ghost-animations. | /// 45 /// other sense. other Horses stamp & steam on the hill & we burn more & more brightly. & more more the hill burn & we on & steam stamp Horses You must let us go & will not & every & will hardens. go let us the not shell day must You this. we know & eyes justifyyour to us in left language no for, betrayal paid our A part of In the event that our hearts break under the strain, you may see our tree walk into some some walk see tree into our may you the strain, under hearts break our that the event In We are new battles. A portent would probably pass us by. us pass probably would A portent new battles. are We We have recourse only to calendar choking. calendar to only recourse have We nogs. nogs. Soul-death rides in on a manic tin monkey walloping its cymbals together, making various various making cymbals its together, walloping tin monkey a manic Soul-death rides in on The season of deficiency now under way with the characteristic pallor of its front matter. matter. front its of characteristic with pallor the way under now of deficiency The season \\\ 46 \\\ | Theflash of motion. silence, The transformation’s only voice. How hiss the to &bellow hear of others the speak, lesson. the they when There is a world once insensible now present & tempting in its matter. There is an ark languageof not all of it human. These procedures parleyanimals,with of moving unexpected intoknown a knowing & Find astrange inthis. innocence body becoming olderbody &younger simultaneously. | /// 47 /// the edges of the universe & we too & all we make. too & all make. & we we the universe of the edges become the shade it promises. promises. it the shade become Deepest sky. A sparkle in the eye. Fruit. in the eye. A sparkle

Potential in matter. Bodies stretch from one state to another, all unfixed & tending toward toward alltending & unfixed another, to state one Bodies from stretch in matter. Potential

But there is a way it could also go, a mathematical locomotive, a palm tree waiting to to a palm waiting tree locomotive, a mathematical also could go, it a way is there But Tremendous change, product turns inside out, philosophy for all see. to for philosophy out, inside turns product change, Tremendous This happens independently, without human effort. human without independently, happens This All the discs we don’t buy are transformed into sequins & lamé jeggings. & lamé sequins into transformed are buy All don’t the discs we \\\ 48 \\\ | Stop making pudding from self-defeat &move your own for earth achange. Join us, rip your bare shirt, your desperate nipples. Have aheart. Has nothing worked for you? Have you it only all tried to stand with your crotch inthe nose colonies. bacterial Embedded Florescence of calcination or weeping condensate liars. The structures shimmering inmirage. Unclear manifestations half-notion, half-rust. We wish to company part with vast the unlovely gasworks of received expectations. Those of two scaly walls, stymied by of stymied walls, punctuation two scaly &gravy? claims of duty without substance. | /// 49 /// made us. us. made Begun from stone, now light. A man others knew, a body in flower. knew, others A man light. now Begun stone, from us. penetrates that recognize love to the is a way There There is a way of seeing & living that opens us up, & soaksthe earthus in universes the that up, us opens that of & living seeing is a way There Feet on pavement working points into lines. into points working pavement on Feet There was a door passed again & again. Air moist with mantra. with moist Air again. & a door again passed was There There was also the need to tell stories about a man others others knew. man a about stories was alsotell need to the There There was something about flowers. about was something There \\\ 50 \\\ | Believe inme. IcanBelieve donothing but love. With fire. blood-borne I am man the with of aheart grain. tasteThis of ink forever on my tongue. Fruit of language held hands. insmall Tough &veined. Usually open. knife that grows breath.Each speaks duller with every Raw flesh &rawthewritten wind burying word. I am paint the on freezing lamp, the mantle always covered Trust insoot. my &my teeth I am son the of question the wheel. &the inme. IamBelieve man the hands with small usually open. apples. In dreams you have held them. | /// 51 /// slow fluid, weary in its claim to weary being. claim its in fluid, slow

How hard things form, condensed around the wick of maybe, or crust & scab a scum over crust & scab a scum or maybe, over of the wick around condensed form, things hard How No essence here, no coat to hang on it. on hang to coat no here, essence No Who could roll in that question now, the light shrieking in the tree, so in the bitter? tree, shrieking the light now, question in that roll could Who A dust of ignorance coats the tongue we share. Darkness reconsiders us, what we are doing. are we what us, reconsiders Darkness share. we the tongue coats ignorance of A dust When you ask about the soul-point all the matter rushes into it. into rushes all the matter the soul-point about ask you When \\\ 52 \\\ | Who can steer loam the &bite blossoms the of vine but the you my dear? Oh preternatural bronze crucible vibrating with hot, hot down ages the &eyes that spill Too organized for my own for Ilook good canal. anew Make ashiny circle on make of wall, the abin napkins full floss ostrich burgers.Remember A desk pushed into corner the for happenstance the to stand on. Who cares mud when is made? Fingers ears inthe to trouble trouble. A banner year, asprig of parsley. cream &questions on arm! magnetized the ostrich burgers? | /// 53 /// the stone. hands itch to carry this lamp or a benign weight into another room, my mouth will mouth my room, another into a benign carry to or weight this itch lamp hands will sound emerge. of & a maze open everything. my it, of the now claim, to wait the I cannot things bone, & its life Embrace The hair that stands at the back of my neck, the throat that fits the word as the plum fits plum asthe word fitsthe that neck, my the throat of at the back stands that hair The Do you see? The things we fight for do fight for us as well. as us for for do fight we fight see? The Dothings you My skin will write its salt & its coins all across the sky. allacross coins & its salt skin will its write My will filltears. with trust with & potency, eyes, ablaze My

When the wars end & the smoke recedes like themeniscus like in a half-full recedes glass, & the when smoke end my the wars When \\\ 54 \\\ | [part two]

| /// 57 /// thing you have named. named. have you thing How we become, & make ourselves matter. ourselves & make become, we How How word and world meet inside us. meet inside world and word How This is how our worlds shape us. shape worlds our how is This You & it becoming permeable in your speaking. permeable in your becoming & it You

To speak of a thing is also to change it, to take it into your mouth, to fill yourself with a with fillyourself to mouth, your into take it to it, also speak is change a thing to of To What began as earth turns to sky. What began as ox turns to army. to turns ox as began What sky. earth to as began turns What This is what I know: the shape of anything can changed. can be anything of I know:shape is the This what \\\ 58 \\\ | Put it on paper. saturate Iwill you as Isaturate my own body. I am kindof the &stains, man seeps who wicks up from edges. the Dream of enough spoons, enough blankets. me enter Let there, too. Make words space between &letme enter. open guarding the Pull flesh &let me enter. say like they of work.Bodies Are you receiving? Make to move bodies into. Asecret. I’m giving it away. | /// 59 /// Enchanted house. Enchanted lamp. Garden of spirits. of Garden lamp. Enchanted house. Enchanted The body lights itself from within. itself from The body lights The signals play as animals play. We continue to love. We continue play. animals as play signals The There is no standard shape. We love. shape. standard no is There The body tries out different positions, costumes, meanings. meanings. costumes, positions, different The bodyout tries The body takes in but it does not give back. give it doesnot but The body in takes Wind & rain combine into one single packet of data. of packet single one into combine & rain Wind At these times the signals become impossible to interpret clearly. interpret to these times the signals impossible become At The body becomes a display of antique scissors. antique of The a display body becomes The body becomes a wheelbarrow loaded defunct electronics. with The a body wheelbarrow becomes At these times the body becomes a forest that runs right up to the edge of a cliff. a cliff. of the edge to up runs right that these times the body a forest becomes At \\\ 60 \\\ | A fraught edgethrough knifing the most intimate space. Nothing left but to envelopbecomingthis in pictures & words. A match for daily this fuse. throbThe theknowing. deed & of of Lessonsneed the of reconfigured center. Now strange the pore opens. Thetwilight theknown of descends. body To emergence the begin from pupa to imago. Arecasting of one human creature from Somewhere cast vaguely about for alanguage or an origin. maturity to metamorphic indeterminacy. | /// 61 /// Word sent out for coffee, yet to return. to yet coffee, for out sent Word The very skin, mask, spot I missed when shaving. very I missedThe spot shaving. when skin,mask, I will bite your tongue. I will carry your toad in my hat. I will carry in my toad tongue. your your I will bite The paraphrase is aphasic, the drip of need that drives this carriage. this carriage. drives needof that drip the aphasic, is The paraphrase Do you underneath? Do you perhaps? Do you peach basket? Do you perhaps? Do you underneath? Do you My things, all. things, My A word sent far away, bleeding or spinning in the air. spinning or bleeding away, far sent A word The very The wrinklingof mask this, skinthe & sun. flaking inthe \\\ 62 \\\ | Nothing of that sort the fits in my mouth. In dark, the defenseless, keening with longing for alanguage that might make spacefor From hypo to hyper. Slips that of blood the now determines my days. My spines push &scales through soft skin. Suddenly stakes the are inescapably Your high. life-&-death crosses mine. Eruption. It hurts. Place yourself inits frame, pop in&out of greenscreen. atLook magnified this world, exaggerated ad absurdum. We about can talk it again &again but migrates. truth the The migrates,skin the & blood. The between fine line & hypo hyper. my body. | /// 63 /// the door. but it does no good. The real is really real. The real is really real. Tick, tock & & toe in tock Tick, real. really real is real.The really real is does good. The no it but opens, my mouth it does, out. A puzzle box. box. A puzzle does, out. it mouth my opens, have purpose & must be so. purpose & must have Tears, blood & all, cashed in, some mortgage of self-preservation. of blood mortgage & all, in, some cashed Tears, The hardness of the action & what it requires of me. of requires it of & action the what hardness The

Read between the bars like a cage you know, not like a pub. & I coat myself in tears & blood in tears myself & I coat a pub. like not know, you Read a cage between like the bars

We go to look at Poussin’s weird Arcadia, notice I’m the guy who isn’t in the picture. & my & my in the picture. who isn’t the guy I’m notice Arcadia, weird Poussin’s look at to go We starters. over dinner at dissention lace unraveling, mud, as now, & heavy fast come Auroras To wit, understand that even love cannot function as protective talisman. That teeth & scales That talisman. protective function as cannot even love that understand wit, To Reading between the bars, not between the lines. Reading between not the bars, \\\ 64 \\\ | It is afable, body. this Any body,permanentpermeable & afiction in revision, retelling. I am not one the changes who others. Iam not one the controlled by will. Pages printed &folded. This is adifferent story,body a constantly retold. I am not that man. There is a aboutstory a manwho controls others by inhabitingthem, changingthem to suit There is a aboutstory a mangiven a stone eatto in place son.of his I thatam stone. There is a aboutstory a woman a who stone. birthed I thatam stone. his will. his will. | /// 65 /// Your entire body metaphor. mixed a entire Your Sip. Identity. Sex in hand, up & down. up Sex in hand, Identity. Sip. Up & down, flash, & gone. Again, again. Again, gone. & flash, & down, Up The growl & burn of the blast of total desperation. of blast of burnthe & The growl Think of an internal combustion engine, the controlled death propelling everyone forward. forward. everyone propelling death controlled the engine, combustion an internal of Think Yet in the cup you taste a thing or two you can’t abide. can’t you two or a thing taste you in thecup Yet You believe in the certainty in the face the mirror gives you. gives in the face the believe mirror in the certainty You You believe in the doubt with which you regard your emanations. your regard which you with believe in the doubt You You believe in it. You believe in the squat cup in your hand, in the red liquid it holds. it liquid in the red hand, in your cup believe in the squat You believe in it. You In your lap your identity rests, curled round your sex like a serpent round a tree. sex a serpent like round your curled round rests, identity your lap your In The tea is the bloodteais metaphor. the The is mixed the \\\ 66 \\\ | I’m not ready, &yet that’s Iam or all ready. can ever be: My cultivars can’t yield. My organs shift. A bundle c’est of nerves, moi I put myself out there, like an eye. thereIn foeauto-asphyxiating is anew eachstruggle &wrong wrong wrong. Thatsex elephant the in room is self-haunting.my Can’t let go of can’tit, let go. , bouncing over my own cheek. | /// 67 /// One gift of body, one strong gesture, one strange seed shared man to man. to man seedshared strange one gesture, strong one of giftbody, One This is one poem, one way to give a form to a thought thing. to a thought form a to give way one one poem,is This Pull it out slowly until it hurts. it until slowly out Pull it My tongue, my language. Wet fruit of words. Half a plum stretching to a phrase. a phrase. to stretching a plum Half words. fruit of Wet language. my tongue, My Pinch & pull it forth to follow the bird of my name. my of the bird follow to forth it & pull Pinch My fingers move between my lips. I part my teeth. Seek my tongue. tongue. teeth.my my I Seek part my lips. between move fingers My I cup my chin in my small thick hand. You would do it too this way. too this way. do it would You small hand. thick in my chin my I cup I touch my mouth & my name leaps out, a bird erupting from cover. cover. from erupting a bird out, leaps name & my mouth my I touch \\\ 68 \\\ | The word penis Loneliness, well index. of: see things These I’m not the on side other of. Assimilation passing: index.or see Makes it for cookpot the hanging above itself &calling society. inacone wood props dry itself upDry with assumptions. There are no more attempts at understanding. Where spirit dothe traveler the guidestake by hand? Where companion dothe animals live? Where urban the metaphors? Folks say tells what body way to go up mountain &what means. some fucking valley Whole interrogations inhybrid-genre heterosexual clitoral discuss breathing, semaphore. is spoken by someone else, causes discomfort. The word sperm . | /// 69 /// It is forbidden here to trust our bodies, to know their words through static, to love them. love to static, through their words bodies, trust to our know to here forbidden is It What is the masks? self is behind the gritty What What is the heart & can it be read? it the heart is & can What Drowning in the vast noise of lies. of noise in the vast Drowning Drowning in the illusion of business-as-usual. of in the illusion Drowning For some different feeling or some bit of question. Fabric of becoming. Fabric question. of bit or some feeling different some For Now, a wheel of sweat rolls from head to toe & we are stinking for silence. stinking for are toe & we head to from rolls sweat a wheel of Now, Next day, terror. The dilation of risk. dilation The terror. day, Next It hit below the belt. Vision shrank & dimmed. shrank Vision the belt. below hit It \\\ 70 \\\ | The tomorrow of me on still anotherpage, my fingers wet with data. myClose eyes.Wrench from my cry awild throat. The & heart pulls pushes, big diamond spinning in bones,my strange & hard. This brick that,or becoming meat,becoming artichoke. There is no disputewith my blood. Make poisonits into food. | /// 71 /// The folds are filled, concavity rippling with otherness. Take your either or & go home. go or & either your Take with otherness. rippling concavity filled, are folds The You see here, it’s just like you heard, just like you were told, just what you were afraid of. of. afraid were you what just told, were you like just heard, you like just it’s see here, You Your habits will not make me a bunny or a syrinx. Give it up now. up it a syrinx. Give or a bunny me make will not habits Your Pants down pants down move out of the frame for a moment. There. a moment. for the frame of out move down pants down Pants I want you to look here at these elements of meat, the bite of horror in my hand. my in horror of the bite meat, of these elements at look here to you I want Move your mommytron trade out of my harmattan. my of trade out mommytron your Move Look here at this tuft, the strange skin. These are (pants down) hairs of light. of hairs down) are (pants skin.These strange the this tuft, at Look here Pants down. Are you upset? you Are down. Pants Pants down, pants down. pants down, Pants \\\ 72 \\\ | Something immobilized man, inthis ahorn of fear pinning to itself, body the alone. The meal of acceptance now only asmear on a napkin. They’ve looking been askance as one looks at a mirage or a ship appearing on a noon Answers like great stones pushed out through sinuses. the Making fevers on flesh. the Making apie out of patience, some forced speech out of body. the Nickel-words wrapping around tongue right at root. the They’ve askingbeen real bucket questions. horizon, listening to cracked lips form pain. | /// 73 /// My film is fading. filmis fading. My baby. In my boots my toes collude & my ragin’ heart splits into a knowing grin. I’m here for you, you, for here grin. I’m a knowing into heart splits ragin’ & my toes collude boots my my In Call me a micromanager. Call me a creepy fuck. Call a creepy me Call a micromanager. me Flamingoes make pretty pretty. I smear my walls with sweat. I knock again on your door. your on I knock again walls sweat. with my I smear pretty. pretty make Flamingoes

I have news for you: my knife is extensive. My imp is perverse. My baubles are not coveted. not are baubles perverse. is imp My My extensive. is knife my you: news for I have re-mapping. I knock on your door. Word, lineage, treatment of my drift. Sad of saladsequential my of treatment lineage, Word, door. your I knock on I bring you my dangerous equipment & inescapable conditions. & inescapable equipment dangerous my you I bring \\\ 74 \\\ | Something-key. Tip of tongue upper between &lower incisors. I like to listen for your hand. In word the spoken by air &mechanism Ilisten for shapes Clavicle, something-key. Make your line. Another apostrophe to hook under clavicle. the theribcagethe & between street. the in space The childish cry A thing that exemplifies the ways & hurt knowwe it. Hand inglove, skinfolded the across current the underneath, flowing. made by fingers. | /// 75 /// Come down here & besmirch them. & besmirch here down Come Whatever else I’ve got, you know I have good shoes. I have know you got, else I’ve Whatever My overbearing shelves & selves. shelves overbearing My My diabetic attitude trumps my arthritic temper. my trumps diabetic attitude My I miss little eyes in the night so watch out for that. for out so watch eyes in the night little I miss No joke, the screen is dark & I left my animal at home. at animal my & I left dark the screen is joke, No I’d like to suck your knuckle, genius. knuckle, your suck to like I’d I’d like to fold you over that railing like a pride flag. I’d like to spin you silly on my axis. my axis. on silly you spin to like I’d flag. a pride like railing that over you fold to like I’d A beautiful day all endorphin. Can you lip it big? it lip you Can all endorphin. day A beautiful \\\ 76 \\\ | Work that monkfish into a stoneripple jutting intosea, overthe lantern a showing order & Lick lick lick little monster. admirably. In away awalk from adenatured child under Ihad which hidden,inafolding fortune- Make noises of like asky inclinations. full Love my various &difficult monster. its punctuation. telling paper mouth, predictive the fails yet skirt again bare &these feet perform | /// 77 /// the mouth of the west, the helm of yes & of need. & of yes of the helm the west, of the mouth Wait for my capacity to arrive, to respond to your urgent hush. urgent your to respond to arrive, to capacity my for Wait Holy monster sucking the fallen stars scooped in handfuls, rubbed into raw skin. skin. scooped raw the fallen rubbed stars sucking in handfuls, into monster Holy

A gray gift hand reaches out to stroke the flesh below the awning of the ribs, to grip the hip tothe ofthe ribs, grip awning the fleshbelow the stroke to out reaches gifthand A gray Night thunders you to sleep. to you thunders Night Some moments make a man long for stop-motion sequences & fur. sequences stop-motion for long a man make moments Some Great holy monster beating, bone laid bare in the teeth of the day. in the teeth of bare laid bone beating, monster holy Great \\\ 78 \\\ | demanding? When it decay will into some blur from bonds, of their loosed enter particles me, graphiteThe thattrail shelters me is alimit. Underneath that line sits inexpressible, the terrible the net of feeling that makes ascarecrow In an eternity of fluxthe pencil onlypencil, for a tool is a placing an arbitrary lineslinking secondsbetween between worlds. is agulf The gulf eyesamoment new eyes.Open these later.Close bulletproof car. of bones the &drives its fat claw into again body this &again like some president’s somethingbetween &something else. | /// 79 /// become a city. a city. become Your long bullet just another mute toy, solidified, half-buried, a pin through its sternum. its pin through a half-buried, solidified, toy, mute another just bullet long Your

One day your scar will become a nail. Your body will become a lamp. The treasure will The treasure body will a lamp. become Your scar will nail. a become your day One The long line of your fluid makes a bullet soft as a worm. a as bulletsoft a fluid makes your of line long The Like a little child you hang your feet over the edge & spit between them. & spit the edge over feet your hang you child Like little a Do you dare take that treasure from its pit? its from treasure take that dare Do you \\\ 80 \\\ | Nothing left take,to notbow.even a teeth. Foolish, hands open like fans at end the of paper arms, woven straw the between heart manySo stories that end with one man lost &alone amid Desolation. ruins. We to stroke for try our bodies comfort, lick our flesh into line, butwhere do we stop? An unfortunate depth of fear. So, it again. begins | /// 81 /// The lungs impossible, too vast to move. to too vast impossible, lungs The It is the blood, instead. The heart forced through the bones & into the hands. the & into the bones through forced heart The theblood, is instead. It No more a cask of serpents’ eggs hatching in the belly, slow squeeze at the temples. the temples. squeeze at slow in the belly, eggs hatching serpents’ of a cask more No Take solace in this. The nature of panic has changed, you see. you changed, has of panic nature solace in this. The Take In a place of half-light & reflection count the hairs emerging. emerging. hairs the count & reflection half-light of a place In Drown the selves in history again, helplessly. history in again, the selves Drown The salt mask makes itself again. itself makes mask The salt Loud shank of brittle understanding shifts beneath a wet garment. wet garment. a shifts beneath understanding brittle of shank Loud \\\ 82 \\\ | Stretch my arms my wide. Decide moves insecret sequence. Forget everything. To what my doIalign compass? &simple,taste The theso dry of yourreach earth some of it followDoes from that this I’d stop fighting? whatTo doI pledge loyalty? Pressed like aman into snatched some service at port. Trembling infront of calendar, the forcing issue, the forcing perspective. hazard this expecting to erupt forBeen some now. time cold flag? | /// 83 /// demands. The pain erupts. erupts. The pain demands. Fern of blood coloring your face with surprise. face with your blood coloring of Fern Set up the ogham of daily dance. The embrace of this whole bed of flowers & veins. veins. & of of flowers this bedwhole embrace The dance. daily of Set the ogham up Ache of hands & rasp of voice confirm. voice of & rasp hands of Ache Now you’re a man in a sequence of negotiations. of a sequence in man a you’re Now Without a body these things were so a body easily dispensed these with. were things Without

There’s no protection from need. There is no escape from this absolute force. The meat The force. absolute this from no is escape need.There from protection no There’s Surround bodily needs with the fortifications of the mind. It isn’t enough. isn’t It of mind. the bodily the needs fortifications with Surround Nightmares & books that stack in your days. in your stack & books that Nightmares body. Look: the beleaguered walk of the slow winter cockroach. Sleep waddling into & out of the of & out into waddling Sleep cockroach. winter Look: the slow walk the beleaguered of \\\ 84 \\\ | Who are people staring these through all bastard this window? Uncertain message, aclown’s rictus,half afearful half leer. Capture result the with acamera. infrontPractice of amirror. wantsbody The to lead. evidence incontradiction.The with thought the thatBegin facecomposes the itself according to intent. Difficult & surprising. Attempt to using smile corners both of mouth. the | /// 85 /// The dim eye flutters open, awake. open, flutters dim The eye Tongue and breath fill your mouth, alight with thick flame. flame. with thick alight mouth, fillyour breath and Tongue You are the green & gold sound of the sunrise. of sound & gold the green are You Put yourself there, & there. Pour the dust onto the bed. onto the dust Pour & there. there, yourself Put Make methods, a baying hound or a falcon. or hound methods, a baying Make Open the glad hands. with flesh both \\\ 86 \\\ | Sun-warmed groin, erection, sudden laughter. Therebecome, wilderness is a to a forneed frombroadsequence this that, to here there.to Field of hair, skinwarm &abdomen tense, relaxed. then The short centralvibration as a making. How, spread on turns asurface, body to the potential or object. & grass tall heaving& grass tall wind, inthe how becomes this. body the | /// 87 /// Curious hands. Song & groan. Song hands. Curious Be full & tongue. froth & give, Touch & commit to the body, spin the nurse of shame to face the wall. to shame of the nurse spin the body, to commit & Touch A fear of appearing as we are in any moment. in any are we as appearing of A fear A fear of hair, of separation, of power or joy without betrayal. without joy or power of separation, of hair, of A fear There is a mask of understanding we put on. put we of understanding mask is a There A break that becomes a resonance. a becomes that A break To say something is open, something grasped. something open, is something say To Curious hands. The seeking, like an act of speech. of an act The like seeking, hands. Curious \\\ 88 \\\ | Oh Iam dear friend, on my to knees you room &the shudders once, twice.We are still. To groan with paper the &sand of it To all. wait by window the for to excuse the come. spurtingMilk from dizzyslits. Tall gems &winter coffee thetone dial & of old. Your finished. work be soon will Baste that hard fire intoseamsthe of trousers.my | /// 89 /// press into the existing fabric of things. of fabric the existing into press Here it is, what you called, it’s coming. it’s called, you is, what it Here Make this things. too & this in the body middle of & stand Make Grounded & belly-mudded, make it new, make. new, it make & belly-mudded, Grounded A learning curve that looks suspiciously like the horizon. like curveA learning looks suspiciously that

A movement inside to enter dialogue with a process, hard to make a world out of or even or of out a world make to hard dialogue a process, with enter to inside A movement It’s what was called to you. to called was what It’s Touch the open mouth making contact between species. contact making mouth the open Touch Touch this reptile heart in strange skin. heart in strange this reptile Touch \\\ 90 \\\ | It over. all speaks Walks up &down. Jerks it when speaks. Breathes through its skin & grows &grows. Lives dark inthe &doesn’t sleep. to visions the A friend that wait for making. to hand, the A friend to blood. the afriend Thatbad red roach walks up &downday. all Made of want & shine. & need | /// 91 /// Dispassionate until the light comes. the light until Dispassionate Man, leaning toward sangfroid in a mediated endothermic body. body. endothermic in a mediated sangfroid toward leaning Man, There, not-there. Flesh, not-flesh. Flesh, not-there. There, The reality of adjustment means strange intercourse. strange means of adjustment reality The Camera directions. Night. Medical data points on each other’s skin. each other’s on points data Medical Night. directions. Camera You tell yourselves the time. Tell yourselves night is coming. is night yourselves Tell the time. yourselves tell You Your emotions, his emotions. his emotions, Your Plane to plane. Planet to planet. Strangers without center, or n actors in search of. of. in search n actors or center, without Strangers planet. to Planet plane. to Plane Walk in & alongside that unseen lizard man. Inhabit his contours even as he shifts. shifts. he even as contours his Inhabit man. unseen lizard that in & alongside Walk \\\ 92 \\\ | [part three]

| /// 95 /// & the words emerging from his mouth stretch into bands of fabric dripping with with dripping fabric of bands into stretch mouth his from emerging & the words painful broth. & a man’s hand turns, turns in the light to a boat or a dish or a boat to in the light turns turns, hand & a man’s terrifiedwith us. The earthgroans audible. becomes Blankness

One step, two beyond the expected beyond two dance step, One A statement then a demand. A statement From the stage there is a collapse of energies. of a collapse is there the stage From To hide beneath a leaf like a lost key. a lost like a leaf beneath hide To The strange way that action unfolds, to be swept under under carpet.the to be swept unfolds, action that way strange The This sense of walking into a dispute already in progress, noises & audience shifting. shifting. audience & noises progress, in already a dispute of walking into This sense Some wild question aimed like a portent in a specific stream of events. in a specificstream a portent like aimed wildSome question \\\ 96 \\\ | A circle of men, hands their over heads. their Stoneware waiting to shatter. ochre.The in soaked air is Passing by, alate see rose imprisoned of truck. abad grill inthe North north-east. Buildings dance inplace. wind scatter the See branches. the No chance to movement track the of splendors or glint. The contractions of a parturition. reverse In terrible waves it opens. Asky or amouth of &rating. news | /// 97 /// Walk ground singing deliriously of last week’s flood. week’s last of deliriously singing ground Walk Walk brilliant willow standing up to its hem in duckweed. hem its to up standing willow brilliant Walk Walk burning skin. burning Walk Walk timetable of development. of timetable Walk Walk sun-bleached desperation of violence & blood effervescing painfully. & blood violence effervescing of painfully. desperation sun-bleached Walk Walk screaming child. screaming Walk Walk tiny dog & enormous master. enormous dog & tiny Walk Walk stopgap humiliation of the methadone clinic. the methadone of humiliation stopgap Walk Walk negative-number confidence factor. confidence negative-number Walk Walk cracked headlight of swaybacked pickup truck. pickup swaybacked of headlight cracked Walk Walk stares of people. Eyes of drivers. of Eyes people. of stares Walk Walk oil scab spread over the sidewalk quilt. a terrible like over scab spread oil Walk Walk crust of filth baked into the street. the filth baked into crust of Walk \\\ 98 \\\ | Night is coming. It on tongue, the is bead aglass tasting of emptiness. Theresong is a the air sings herethis in place of endingbox & bootsong & absence, a in The strange thescales on holy tree,tree the walking of error. Therepathway is a beyond the steel &ice of terror &loss. earth’s rotation. thoughtswhich are from taken changes place the to place &animals observe inthe | /// 99 /// lust. lust. I want the musky blood of hope smeared across my chest & that long hand. long & that chest my across smeared hope blood of the musky I want I want the sharp voice of someone’s little dog. little someone’s of voice the sharp I want I want the dirt & the flood. I want

Outside the door the same sun grips me by the nape of my neck, makes me desperate with desperate me makes neck, my of the nape by me grips sun the the same door Outside This city leaps & stretches & falls like a jet of water. & falls a like jet stretches & leaps city This Sun pops on the glass towers of a place I do not know. Laughing trees. Laughing know. I do not a place of the glass towers on pops Sun These things matter. Rain matters in Paris, thirsty stones & bearded & graves. bearded stones thirsty Paris, in matters Rain matter. These things Outside the door it is 79 degrees. It’s 73 in Los Angeles & in Paris. 73 in LosAngeles It’s 79 degrees. is it the door Outside \\\ 100 \\\ | Mad an animal ruin, alone inits cage. What city is Thames this, unrolling the middle in of adesert? it moveDoes you off-script? Does it move all? at thatDoes sliver of meatoff-plumb?everything shift What city is Canyou this? London be ifyou’ve got abit or of Port-au-Prince Dallas or well-played,So plausibly tight dialogue rendered. Action is hard, incharacter. There’s acitysomewherethis, maybe all just in meters awayfrom us. The Thames unrolls licorice-like, pangolin-sexystretch. Helsinki inyour teeth? | /// 101 /// & beyond that a road that is a blanket beneath which thousands sleep. which thousands beneath a blanket is that a road that & beyond beyond that a flaking iron bridge that leads to a thick leather belt three inches too inches three belt leather to a leadsthick bridge that a flaking iron that beyond their dander on. their dander

Eternal not-enough, a city of skinny stares skinny of a city not-enough, Eternal small.

Upriver a bag-end of drought speculators & asphalt hopefuls & years of gray topcoats & topcoats gray of hopefuls & years asphalt & speculators drought of a bag-end Upriver

Forgotten foundations mutating into practice boundaries, a mucky ruin for cattle to rub to cattle ruin for a mucky boundaries, practice into mutating foundations Forgotten In your pasture, the networks thunder around stone & midden. stone around thunder the networks pasture, your In \\\ 102 \\\ | Thatsomething, old snail house. Drum, oven. Nine sheep orbit mountaintop the &cloaked infern asomething watches. Hide from passing the army inafortuitous or castle cottage. Strong enchanted boots, fiddle, nightingale. Metal cuts dough, little hero &embroidery belt. Paint with edible walls blue sound dripping from plaster the it when rains. Moon mouth crater cut with oh meaning, depth. Someone little bakes fables. | /// 103 /// display for justice’s shining scales. shining justice’s for display She’s onetoo. She’s

A lizard fucks in mica sense, pierces my skin in jade crawl, makes a day into a nest, a big a big a nest, into a day makes in jade skin crawl, my in mica fucks sense, pierces A lizard I love the way my trash talk trash a lizard. & makes collects my in a corner the way I love I love the way a golden light moves through a certain cloud. type through of moves light a golden the way I love A vein of desire. Make it like a blood-clot, grime-encrusted window in a ghost town. in a ghost grime-encrusted window a blood-clot, like it Make desire. of A vein Licked something, silent & clean, broken out of sky & dendrite. sky of out broken & clean, silent something, Licked Little bright lizard-stone, marking tongues pockets of opprobrium. pockets of tongues marking lizard-stone, bright Little \\\ 104 \\\ | Red, throbRed, you with sun, the down there hold. inthe When Igasp there is areflex feltthe in world’s meat. Tenderness is something to belong to, outstanding performer on atightrope, abrittle cane A cup wanders from hand to hand always inneed. Anticipatory droplets condense about our heads. We are looking for passage desks the &drought. between Traffic whips, intease, a pound of stone rubbed dust into the pores, honey, baseball the on eachshoulder. cards of prairie stars. | /// 105 /// parking garages, melted down into composite cubicles. composite into down melted garages, parking undeveloped future building site. building future undeveloped owner, business plan. plan. business owner, Words are missing. Words are missing & I too have disappeared from use, value. use, from disappeared & I too have missing are Words missing. are Words

Words are missing, taken from the lexicon, moved into mortar for luxury residences luxury residences for mortar into moved the lexicon, taken from missing, are Words space? What is his illegitimate form of existence demanding horizontal & profligate relations with with relations & profligate horizontal demanding existence of form illegitimate his is What

Ask yourself what that man could possibly be doing walking through that piece of prime of piece that walking through be doing possibly could man that what yourself Ask Ask yourself what that man is doing smack in the middle of your e-reader. your in the middle of smack doing is man that what yourself Ask alarm you? disgust Does my Take my wolf, make him product, word product, more thing to ease owner-to- to thing some trade, more product, word him product, make wolf, my Take scope. Words are missing. Steal willow, steal jaguar, make plover senseless in the work of reduced reduced of in the senseless work plover make steal jaguar, willow, Steal missing. are Words \\\ 106 \\\ | Driving as dick practice, position, pole prions. Ilove aman. being Haptic blanket mess with Orangina the &niceforest wayback. inthe of underwear In dog-feelings disavowals. these these right this fromI can see highway. the At even. speed waves beach On the bags to shore. bring plastic grocery My tears have my dried, bleeding. is still nose so iffy.This is boogie-flower The little on the dashboard tripping, nausea. | /// 107 /// resplendent galaxy of swords. galaxy of resplendent

The family of riders you carry in your chest all trumpeting your concerns, your love, love, your concerns, your all carrychest trumpeting you of your riders in family The You. You are the simple garden cutting through the glassed-in through tower. cutting garden the simple are You You are moving the hand of the clock forward, back, forward. back, forward, the clock of the hand moving are You You are open & closed yes the way a young flower & an old flower are both closed. both areopen & old flower an & flower a young theclosed & way open yes are You You are the work of winking, the chain-link jaw. winking, the chain-link of the work are You You are about this limb & this barn door. this limb about are You You are about this. about are You \\\ 108 \\\ | My forest &your fruit But we are &sandwich salad together &we wadein&women watch us. Forcing edges that because is what were they trained to do. Spent forcing edges to touch can only they when part. Melted icecap of years wash over us. We middle-aged men, together years. &their Sit dining knees old inemergency high women beside children. talk mouth. & we rooted years intheir get up, able one-color to see eyeinonly side, green plus | /// 109 /// The slime of a smile dripping over the jaw, a sign to begging be down. taken jaw, the over of a smile dripping slime The Room made of hedge not weatherproofed against hornets or insinuating strangers. strangers. insinuating or hornets against weatherproofed not hedge of Room made Like—can you hear them? hear you Like—can Does this question make me look like a girl? Do these leaves rustle in my pants? pants? rustle a girl? Do look like in my me these make leaves Does this question The hovering complex. Silent circle above the head. the above circle Silent complex. hovering The The battle to stay upright still fought by innovative constant renewable resources. resources. renewable constant by innovative still fought upright stay to The battle In a room made of hedge, blanket-strewn, one lamp. Disapproving hiss. Disapproving lamp. one blanket-strewn, hedge, of made a room In \\\ 110 \\\ | creepyThose nemeses shadow withus discreetturgid, devices ripple into our reflections & frozenThis grid of our angerglaciates us into helpless preoccupation. fingersOur stretch toward fingers.other Just off camera we yearnimpotently. Everyone wears alittle badge of honor: person of interest. photosSex flash the walls on around us & knowwe ourselvesthem. in One by one our skulls are illuminated from an unknown source. Facility of map speech, inarough bucket dissolving noisily, we have why. no idea divergence. At once it’s clear that something-fabric the has unraveled with one unanticipated are lost. | /// 111 /// Declare a state & hide there. a state Declare Say one thing & know it to be a truth. Know a truth & do not speak a truth it. & do not be to a truth. Know it & know thing one Say Bound tightly in a skin of project & define. project of in a skin Bound tightly A face glimpsed in a mirror with a body that moves oddly. moves a body with that A face glimpsed in a mirror There are dreams that follow, soft down spiraling from the flesh of the shoulders. of the the flesh from spiraling down soft follow, that dreams are There A name to look through like a prism. like look through to A name Nourishing star, tremendous crane stretching its wings for the hope of a future forward. forward. a future of the hope for wings its stretching crane tremendous star, Nourishing \\\ 112 \\\ | A tongue through thrust lips made round, tongue with letters snowed along its tip. &turn. HaveSpeak agrowth of word, asmattering of shine on thing spoken. the being Forced pattern like grown frost. You &spin arim take it so. It’s of afruit low dark plane. with it lips, the as call abus acul-de-sac streets it calls Call approaches. Cul-de-sac around ofAll our days made round. Shape lights &drops of inforced sound to talk pattern. Lips made round by bright of beasts fruit. street. | /// 113 /// & if it isn’t, you will be made aware of other routes. other of will be aware you made isn’t, & if it Not a shark in sight & still I check the scene for blood bloom. Make me obvious. me blood Make bloom. the & still scene for I check in sight a shark Not Scent of risk stuck in my mustache. in my stuck risk of Scent Fold me, cut, shuffle. Next I open, spread on green baize with you pushing your luck into me. into luck your pushing you with greenbaize on spread open, Next I shuffle. cut, me, Fold I will again. the door open No, that isn’t what I meant to say. The misquote is serious. misquote The say. to I meant what isn’t that No,

Nicety fails. Look me in the eye & tell me where you want me & I will me possible. is see if that want you where Look me in the fails. & tell eye me Nicety Here, it’s the room with slippery walls. Peer around the corner. around slippery with walls. the Peer room it’s Here, \\\ 114 \\\ | Left: waiting.Left: Right: acatalogue of deaths involving fingers. poisonous pewter jug too Left: to use forbeverages. Right: hippocampus. telltale smearLeft: paint.of inacan,Right: label torn. the dogfood ahigh-end strollerLeft: abandoned inalift. Right: erasure of previous the day’s menu. sea. the Left: Right: hands form herds &migrate forcefully. freezes, strips its the drill gears,Left: burns outthe motor. Right: Icome to end the of known the universe. | /// 115 /// some vital function. some How to walk a path that is both inside & outside the body & what am I right now, after all? after now, I right am the body & what & outside both is inside walk that to a path How From behind clenched teeth nearly every teeth nearly behind clenched day. From me? of want you do What The question froths from the mouth again & again theseagain days: & again mouth the from froths question The This mystery grows & the body slows with its force. its with & the mysteryslows body grows This

Nothing to do but take it all into the body, as though the indecision & bafflement nourish nourish & bafflement the indecision though as the body, all into take it do but to Nothing Again the road splits into a mycelial system of intense complexity. intense of system a mycelial into splits the road Again \\\ 116 \\\ | A way of waiting, building. this Some void inbrick. encased Knife-handed dust around doubt which flammable collects, drops of misery. A zero thatthe terrifies outside away. Desperately cold of silence door. the of colorA flurry language, photonic & chilly. spyholeA beveled-glass tucked just above prismatic eye-level, partially &cracking light, A door, asparrow. Moments of English unpopular for ambiguity. their dating dramas. tumbling light about vestibule the many like so adolescent girls performing their | /// 117 /// Our regions pressed in & pinched, a face of dough, breached by intangibles. by breached dough, of a face & pinched, in pressed Our regions Does peer in, slim chins on the outer sill, making breath-candy on the other side of the glass. side of the other on sill, breath-candy making theDoes outer on peer chins in, slim A dry light comes through the window, enters our regions over the drawbridge of the cooker. the cooker. of the drawbridge over regions our enters the window, A dry through comes light Lemon-colored apparatus on the kitchen counter, seductive, thinking & wanting. seductive, counter, the kitchen on apparatus Lemon-colored Analogous concerns fern out from mouths opened to investigate. to opened mouths from out fern concerns Analogous This is a new something made from the smuts of burning interest, cryogenically canceled. interest, burning of smuts the made newis a from This something Read our regions in the light of coruscating tumbleweed fixtures. tumbleweed coruscating of in the light regions Read our \\\ 118 \\\ | Down on your We knees. are gators all here &make each other aware of it. Perception, precepts, prefects of areas. mixed-use No central hub but what gets by imposed abrain wishing to order. The never-noticed cracksthe concrete in floormake root systems. Drive, amachine or an inclination. Mixed plexus of days. | /// 119 /// Neural interface helmet & night vision. & night helmet interface Neural Made a hunt in a tourist area. in a tourist a hunt Made Made a hunt in a sorcery collection. a hunt Made We like & like & like. A death, wrapped up. wrapped A death, & like. & like like We When something opens a hound thing, a bay. Take a minute to mole. mole. to a minute Take thing, a bay. a hound opens something When Made a hunt. A test of noise & a scene plummeting to earth. to Deal & a scene & laid. plummeting noise of A test a hunt. Made \\\ 120 \\\ | doorstep. sourceThe thatwindof a impscarries downfrom the mountains, dropsthem the on outLooking from inside the of leaf hard agreen-rimmed &brittle. Many days are like keen mirror this, eyeinthe looking sensible, looking on. Hose in hand making teams on window. the Imperative marked with or silence wasteful knees. A saucer ringed with mice, armature & ofwords.bodies soft Day folded into itself, frayed sweater crumbling into drawer. the | /// 121 /// against its own anus. own its against arms—human arms—forward many terabeats. many arms—forward arms—human

its lips with & ends begins loss that again, makes & makes & makes of time heart The In a moment of future being some tool digs into the software of accumulation, projects the projects of accumulation, the software digs into tool being some future of a moment In Dark bank overhung with discarded goods. discarded with bank overhung Dark The gun that work creates, the ballistic stream of yes & maybe & absolutely no. absolutely maybe & yes & of the ballisticstream creates, work gun The that Abraded skin of action, sequence interrupted by gravity or the wash of white noise. white of the wash or gravity by interrupted sequence action, of skin Abraded A shoe in the water tells the story of loss. the story of tells A shoe in the water \\\ 122 \\\ | As iffeathers from fall clouds, grow vast, consume our ways. O civet waxtune, of obee, water drill against sky. the Guilt works hand to paw. Again, aline. of Queer dove, purslane. Proximity. Emergent conditions, circuit. Oil, as iffeathers. As ifconstancy of wavebreak. of Length tubing stretched in grass. &placed | /// 123 /// every opening. condenses upon the walls, controls the hard bank of approval, the drift of need,of the drift approval, bank of the hard the walls, controls upon condenses soforth. Soft & hard together & making more of ourselves than we can carry. we can than ourselves of more making & together hard Soft & Missile, ejaculate, pollen. ejaculate, Missile, Infant, excrescence, word. excrescence, Infant,

A murmur of hope we never fail to grind into salt for unredeemed earths, & we fly from fly from earths, unredeemed & we for salt grind to into fail never we hope of A murmur We hold our breath so we don’t miss it. miss so don’t we breath our hold We hear. to we wait an until is There We have our orange trees & our vape-houses where the presumption of entitlement entitlement of the presumption where vape-houses & our trees orange our have We We are all adept at breaking good silence, that frail wishbone. good that silence, breaking at all adept are We \\\ 124 \\\ | Makeshift adjustment,pastiche, approximation. Kneeling before adrowned star &its speech. Worried about animal equations &fear &longing. The army tyrantsof behind us. Worried about dreams &roots pushing. Desperate pattern of night, flashing lightsthrough grid thethewindow. of | /// 125 /// open space? space? open Unseeable. Do you know, it’s more terrifying to pretend it can be planned than it is to face a future of of face a future to is it than be can planned it terrifying pretend to more it’s know, Do you Often asked the question about planning ahead or stellar cartography. stellar or ahead planning about question the asked Often About to take a leap of faith, knowing just enough to put one foot before the other. before foot one put to enough just knowing faith, of take a leap to About Card 0 shows me blithe & silly. You know the card I mean. the card know You & silly. blithe me 0 shows Card Traitor’s intuition, wherein I follow my foreskin. my I follow wherein intuition, Traitor’s \\\ 126 \\\ | To drop my pants to world, the hands these not meant for lying. whisperedThe think whatno as I of gets imposed Their blue-grayecho the of sky low too over our heads. The shocking honesty of my eyesthe mirror. in own events These come regularly butwith little warning. The recurrence of adead tanglepath.thebriar in soundThe of adeep stress &a strong awareness. In cold the there is along bell. & how impossible any more to pretend adoor to ringed intinsel. be | /// 127 /// want to apply & the days of work it takes to wash the names off, afterwards. off, the names wash takes to it work of & the days apply to want

Golden hair breathes over your legs & chin, coins of meaning against the names the others the others the names against meaning of coins legs & chin, your over breathes Golden hair Slow spin pushing forward or maintaining equilibrium at rest, artificial gravity of a sort. artificial rest, gravity at equilibrium maintaining or forward pushing spin Slow The wheel of becoming is at your back. your at is of becoming The wheel The palm shadows toss slivers & blades in blood-likeblades in & skin. tricklesthe down slivers toss The palmshadows So walk in those petals light. brief of \\\ 128 \\\ | Tongue tip on roof the of mouth, the leaf pressed over apromise. heart, the A hand outstretched &open as though inviting to touch palm the its own. Thought about a handthe way & the likeit looks leaf of a youngsassafras. No other reason shunted to be off but to punish.tickingthe & of droplets on leavesbeneath &palate,Dew shattered of fall rock at feet. Acreated difference. emerging this mist, openSee the mouth of panic. Vision of descent. Flush response, shame borne on flesh the &in it, watercascading down path. a Thought about a handthe & teardrop expression of doom banishment.or trees &on wood. | /// 129 /// will you have some tea? tea? some have will you What is a touch in this place what is a mouth with words in it? words with a mouth is what in this place a touch is What What can we do our oars sprout buds we reach we reach. we reach we buds sprout oars do our we can What What if it stings what if this contact leads to corners & evergreen poison? & evergreen corners leads to if this contact what stings if it What Bash a nail into a tree for me maybe for us both. us for maybe me for a tree into Bash a nail The photo in your hand, the waiting list, the mule. the list, waiting the hand, your in photo The happen? we the things about love say we can dictionary, in our it Is As mutual denizens of no exact mode or meme or bat-shaped lap of shadow on the ground, the ground, on shadow of lap bat-shaped or meme exact no mode or of denizens mutual As Will you approach me like a catapult so as to create a zone of meaning between us? meaning of a zone create so to as a catapult like me approach you Will \\\ 130 \\\ | Time has flavor the language.of Nothingbe done to about it. The imperative of communication sentiencethe view in of worthless language.of thingslanguage a These of dim heuristic questions, opalescent horizon attemptingbe a to A little of acurl blood, hoof pared from arestless horse. Theflavor ofbeating dust back the at throat. the of You know hard taste the of air the snow adry when strains down from ablank sky, kind of word. shuddering &startled. | /// 131 /// & in the foothills the stones murmur & grasses ten thousand years old think up think old up years thousand & grasses ten murmur & in the foothills the stones us. for new names them. know to way no have We There is repetition to consider repetition is There There are sequences to be respectedto monitored. be & sequences are There A buzzard circling creates a vortex. Rainfall a vortex. & fish-fall. creates circling A buzzard Animals & weather move around as time passes. as around move & weather Animals There will always be animals & weather. What is obscuregrieved them. doesnot What weather. & animals be will There always \\\ 132 \\\ | The shouttakesdays to whenreach us & it comes we hold ourselves & shudder. The city opens its lungs. ecstaticThe fuel. Dreams terror.sexual of ofA sense breath held, waiting for aresponse. boomingThe waves shakethe streets. The name erupts,thundering a cowl of hope unfurling pedestriansover & bike messengers. & then the clouds the & then move away from top the of tower. the | /// 133 /// What one desires is what one becomes, the left-behind sentence unraveling in wake. the unraveling the left-behind becomes, sentence one what is desires one What What if the real has no quantity? no has if the real What What if the spirit is not a sack of grain to be to spent? filled grain or a sack of not is if the spirit What Deities to worship in the normal way. in the normal worship to Deities Some walk through vapor, a myth of the normal. of a myth vapor, walkSome through The edge of a building becomes the edge of a word. of a building the edge becomes of a The edge Shadow of motion against the sky. against motion of Shadow Ghost of a bird, near-body flung into the air. the into flung near-body a bird, of Ghost \\\ 134 \\\ | We toss our over cries edge, the to again. decide turn back. Decide At once there is asudden cliff in our way. The net of documentationbehindboth drags creating party our trail. & our obscuring Along way the is ajewel deposited inmoss. Anail is exchanged for aword. Someone breaks bread with diviners &well-diggers, bones to someone church dry takes & We origin of the seek name the of assembly. the Pharos &map, three men inatub. snaps them. | /// 135 /// table when the special cloth reached to the floor, those days never verygone. never those long days the floor, to when the specialtable reached cloth

Find new species in that fractal utopia, similar to those secret animals discovered under the under discovered those to similar animals secret fractal new speciesFind in that utopia, sense. We are wondering battalions of underground movement in the other sense, the spelunking sense, thespelunking in the other movement underground of battalions wondering are We Fried hair & peat moss, the noise of something shattering in the street below. in the street shattering something of the noise moss, & peat hair Fried Something about this makes our backs tired. backs our this makes about Something We are whereabouts unknown possibly on the outskirts of another person’s fractal utopia. person’s another of the outskirts on possibly unknown whereabouts are We \\\ 136 \\\ | This place is a mouththrough which we long agoto learned to promisespeak, each other Nothe left time knock to buildings outfrom under us. The hibiscuspanting absentlythe in opal predawn of lateits luteal phase. Instruct me ways inthe of parkour. Find your two hum &the palms of air the surrounding lamp. the sand the eye waitsBeyond asearing learned. to be Instruct me ways inthe of monster. the The Santa Anawind. The lingual work. menageries &horoscopes &light. | /// 137 /// to shatter shale. shatter to

One word includes another, a load of men with weapons & doomed children, men of words words of men children, & doomed weapons with men a load of another, includes word One The difference between Argonaut & argotist is vehicular. is argotist & Argonaut between difference The Dad owl recognizes the language of thieves. of the language recognizes Dad owl Fossil stuff secret shut-in princesses, can’t count on freedom in release. in on freedom count princesses, can’t shut-in secret stuff Fossil Foothills as infrastructure, foothills as resource. foothills as infrastructure, as Foothills Toads drive weekly bargains around the county for customers. for the county around bargains weekly drive Toads Dad owl takes the syllabus to task, a force to face if home is to be home. be to home. is face if home to a force task, to takes theDad syllabus owl \\\ 138 \\\ | A small opening throughA small inawall ahard which gray tongue appears. The information accumulates in dust. Mistakes,catalogued. Sudden migratory waves of sunflowers. with silences abigCode-breaking dark eye. Make your meaning from cards. these A long crisp snakeskinwhole left theupon doorstep. It nine Abat times. has pane tickling the called of bedroom the window. | /// 139 /// Taken in, carried close in luminous hands. Alive. hands. in, carried close in luminous Taken Alive our pleasures flow, breathed & polished like green jade. like green & polished breathed flow, pleasures our Alive Alive what motion is begun?is motion what Alive Hot house steaming after the straw laid down over bare roots, bone, irrigation. irrigation. roots, bone, bare over down laid straw the after steaming house Hot So rocks shift. Light & a smell of soil. & a smell So shift. Light rocks Note two ritual cakes face to face on a shelf. face on face to cakes ritual two Note Slowly sand & wind perform like a study, maybe population changes or holidays observed. holidays or changes population maybe a study, perform like & wind sand Slowly movement. movement. Vegetable wings reach from big backgrounds, contexts erupting around the origins to echo echo to the origins around erupting contexts backgrounds, big from reach wings Vegetable \\\ 140 \\\ | POETICS and PROCESS: A CONVERSATION WITH JAY BESEMER

Greetings comrade! Th anks so much for talking with us about your process today. Can you introduce yourself in a way that you would choose?

I‘m Jay Besemer. I’m a trans, queer poet disabled by multiple systemic chronic illnesses, currently leaving my 40s.

Why are you a poet?

I have a cheeky answer for this, which I’m going to use here: I’m a poet because poetry is the only vehicle that allows me to simultaneously occupy all possible dimensions.

When did you decide you were a poet (and/or: do you feel comfortable calling yourself a poet, what other titles or aﬃ liations do you prefer/feel are more accurate)?

In many ways “poet” is the only thing I’m really totally comfortable calling myself. Everything else I am is always in addition to--or a mode of, perhaps--being a poet. I think it was always there, a way of being in the world & processing that experience, long before I claimed it as an action I committed to taking for the duration of my life.

What’s a “poet”, anyway?

I have a hard time answering this question consistently, & can’t answer for anyone else, can’t be prescriptive. So understand this as only today’s, this-moment answer, from a highly unusual individual. Simply, a poet makes poems. Th at is, poems result from the experiences of existence, but I don’t necessarily diff erentiate between the existence/experience & the result/product when I use the word “poem.” A poem need not be words. It’s just that most people are accustomed to poems occupying a language body, accustomed to interacting with poetry that way.

What is the role of the poet today?

Th is is a question I can only answer for myself. I am oft en excluded from other people’s answers because of the limits of my own physical situation & by virtue of my own poetics. I try not to be a gatekeeper for others’ work needs.

What do you see as your cultural and social role (in the poetry community and beyond)?

I’ve been shown by others that younger trans, queer & GNC poets are fi nding value in my work. Increasingly poets with chronic/mental illnesses &/or who are also trauma survivors are letting me know that I’m being of service to them. Th is is important & unexpected, because I was under the radar for some decades, & did not have the experience of feeling I was able to be of service, or of feeling that I had any audience whatsoever.

In terms of the immediate poetry community here where I live, my role has had to change quite recently. Poetry events in general are notoriously inaccessible for disabled people, but even most mobility-accessible or Deaf/HoH accessible events are specifi cally inaccessible for me because of the unusual (apparently) confl ux of my health, sensory, pain & fatigue conditions.

At this time, I am rarely able to participate in person, either as performer or as audience member. I observe a great interest among young poets in some of the poetry series I used to be deeply involved with, so I feel they’ll continue in some way, without my involvement- -I can let go, & grieve my own loss of these as means of connection. But as to what I can contribute now, I am still asking that myself. I feel like the only thing I can do--& that not even consistently--is be, & make the work, & get it out there sometimes. Th at has to be enough, though the poetry/activism culture tends to frame that as inadequate. Th is framing is deeply classist & ableist, of course, but it’s still a tremendous obstacle to recognition & validation of many kinds of poetic labor. Lately I’ve been speaking out on that, too, primarily on Twitter.

One somewhat behind-the-scenes thing I do is to quietly make use of my contacts to connect newer writers with opportunities to publish. I do this in large part because nobody did it for me, & I worked hard in relative isolation for 25 years before my fi rst book was published. (I was 43 at the time). I know how demoralizing that is. Again, classism! Ableism!

Talk about the process or instinct to move these poems (or your work in general) as independent entities into a body of work. How and why did this happen? Have you had this intention for a while? What encouraged and/or confounded this (or a book, in general) coming together? Was it a struggle?

I’m not sure how to answer these questions given my overall poetics/working process. But I’ll talk towards the becoming of Th e Ways of the Monster.

I have been referring to this book as the third in a trilogy that began with my fi rst book, Telephone, continued in my third & best-known book Chelate, & now wraps up with Monster. Originally it was formatted according to the practice I used in the other two volumes; while I was revising it for possible publication I changed that, feeling I had exhausted the purpose of the formatting & was in danger of it becoming too associated with my work--like typecasting. I didn’t want something that had a deeply functional, personal purpose to become reduced to “style,” or worse, to be described as “my” style. A previous version of the book had been a fi nalist in 2016 for the 1913 Press Open Prose period, so as I revised for that submission process I made the switch from the fragmented swarm of old into a movement in & out of declarative sentences. Th is was also a response to the changes in my embodiment/movement-through-the-world at the time of its writing. Th ough the books in the trilogy have not been published in a direct sequence (each has been separated by a book from a diff erent project), they were written continuously & separated into volumes at various stopping points. As my experiences of my bodymind (to use Eli Clare’s great term) & its relation to the world/cosmos changed, I had to change the way that came to language in my work.

You can see it through the three volumes: Telephone embodies the back-&-forth swing of the time I was weighing the need to make deep changes to save my life, against my fear of doing so. (Th is may not be plainly spoken in the content of the book, but believe me, it’s there). Th at was the manifestation in language of my experience in/of the world at that time. Th e fragmented, synesthetic, interconnecting endless sensory barrage of Chelate was refl ected in the preservation of the textual format, without the dialectical (or feedback loop) movement of Telephone. But by the time Monster came to be--roughly two years aft er the writing of Telephone--my experiences were radically diff erent. I was well under way in my gender transition. I was treating my chronic & mental illnesses. My body was constantly changing (& still is), but by then I’d moved out of a mode of living where I felt I must justify myself, or apologize/explain what I was, why I was myself, what made me this way. I was ready to take up space, to declare, to claim my experiences as important, as mine.

What formal structures or other constrictive practices (if any) do you use in the creation of your work? Have certain teachers or instructive environments, or readings/writings of other creative people (poets or others) informed the way you work/write?

Some of my work is sourced (cut-up, collaged or erasure work) so there are limitations to them. Generally an erasure project is limited in length by the length of its source text. I use text automation or generation programs/methods, like Markov text processors, & I have ways of misusing word processing/”productivity” apps, & other things like online forms, to generate unplanned texts. But this is not the only way I work. Monster was not constructed this way, nor were the other two books of the trilogy. Th e most infl uential people in my worklife have been my poet/artist friends. Additionally I have benefi ted from relationships with people in other disciplines, mostly in the sciences. I also owe a lot to certain actors, whose work has deeply infl uenced my life & my own work, but who have not all come into my life physically.

I have made various attempts to list the most direct infl uences on my poetic practice over the years. Each list is diff erent, but at the top of all of them there’s always Tristan Tzara. So I’ll leave him there.

Speaking of monikers, what does your title represent? How was it generated? Talk about the way you titled the book, and how your process of naming (poems, sections, etc) infl uences you and/or colors your work specifi cally.

Th e Ways of the Monster is titled from a line in one of its poems. Th is is typical of me; I’m a haphazard titler. In fact I resist titling individual poems for certain projects; this book is one of those, in keeping with the other two in the trilogy. I do seem to be a fan of section titles, though! I guess we have to have some way of navigating within a book, no matter whether we made the book or are experiencing it.

I know a lot of books have “monster” as their ethos right now. For many people, especially Black/Brown, trans &/or disabled people, the monster concept is diffi cult to process; it’s been weaponized against us for so long, of course it’s toxic! So in the book as well as its title, “monster” is used ironically & politically, much as the word “queer” is on a larger scale. For an idea of how I’m using the word, look at its context in the poem. I also ask the unnamed interlocutor to teach me the ways of the Santa Ana wind, & of parkour. It’s not possible for me to enact either of these ways, no matter how well I might be instructed! However, I have behaved monstrously, in the past; I don’t need to learn how to be a monster. My monstrous past behavior reinscribed the experiences that activated my illnesses, so I’m slowly & compassionately unlearning the ways of the monster. Call it a medical application of the word. An unweaponing. What does this particular collection of poems represent to you ...as indicative of your method/ creative practice? your history? your mission/intentions/hopes/plans?

I think I’ve mainly answered these already. I could add that it’s a book that represents closure on one period of my life & acts as an atrium or a clearing where both reader & I can rest before proceeding into the work that comes from the current phase of my life.

What does this book DO (as much as what it says or contains)?

Some of this was explored in other answers; in some ways I can’t answer the question as well as someone who doesn’t know what it took to write it. I guess I need to see what it does out in the world!

What would be the best possible outcome for this book? What might it do in the world, and how will its presence as an object facilitate your creative role in your community and beyond? What are your hopes for this book, and for your practice?

I don’t like to speculate or load down any project with those kinds of projections. What it does isn’t up to me. It’s up to readers. Especially now that I am unable to bring my body to bear in the physical spaces my books occupy, I feel there’s already signifi cant pressure for them to perform in ways I can’t. Maybe that’s true of all books, though.

I do hope someone gets relief, reassurance, validation, new ideas, energy from reading Th e Ways of the Monster. I hope it saves someone from feeling alone & abandoned in a punishing world. Th at’s all I can say. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & THANKS

An earlier version of Th e Ways of the Monster was a fi nalist in 1913 Press’ 2016 Open Prose period. Th anks to the readers & editors at 1913 Press for this distinction!

Diff erent versions of some of these pieces were previously published as follows:

“words are missing” “why would i identify” “chokehold” “pain annoyance” “blurt & burn” originally appeared in Barzakh Issue 7, Spring 2015. https://www.barzakh.net/ spring-2015-1. Th anks to the editors for including these works in this special RAGE Issue!

“the thames” “you are about this” “lizard-stone” “will you approach me” “great holy monster” appeared in Th e Journal Petra Issue 3, Winter 2015. http://www.thejournalpetra. com/003besemer.html. Th anks to editors Olivia Cronk & Philip Sorenson for including these poems!

All my love & gratitude to Elæ [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson] for their friendship, patience, editorial chops, faith in me as poet & person, & commitment. Th is has been an amazing shared adventure!

Love & thanks to fellow OS kin Adrian Silbernagel, Joanna Valente & Peter Milne Greiner, for additional engagement & presence on & off page/screen.

Th anks to Johanna Hedva & John Keene, friends new & old, for spending time with me, this book, & their generous blurbs.

Th anks to those who were present/somehow involved in the process of this book’s coming into being, including Laura Goldstein, Toby Altman, Kenyatta Rogers, Trace Peterson, TC Tolbert, Johannes Göransson, Joseph Bradshaw, & Daniel Borzutzsky. Th anks also to the Red Rover series & the Absinthe & Zygote series where many of these poems were “unpaged.”

Th anks to Rupert Glimm, my love, whose painting graces the cover & whose life graces mine. For you, as always. Jay Besemer’s other books include Th eories of Performance (forthcoming Th e Lettered Streets Press, 2019), Crybaby City (Spuyten Duyvil), Telephone, Chelate (both Brooklyn Arts Press), and Aster to Daylily (Damask Press). He was a fi nalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. He tweets frequently @divinetailor and can be found at www.jaybesemer.net. WHY PRINT / DOCUMENT?

Th e Operating System uses the language “print document” to diﬀ erentiate from the book-object as part of our mission to distinguish the act of documentation-in-book-FORM from the act of publishing as a backwards-facing replication of the book’s agentive *role* as it may have appeared the last several centuries of its history. Ultimately, I approach the book as TECHNOLOGY: one of a variety of printed documents (in this case, bound) that humans have invented and in turn used to archive and disseminate ideas, beliefs, stories, and other evidence of production.

Ownership and use of printing presses and access to (or restriction of printed materials) has long been a site of struggle, related in many ways to revolutionary activity and the fi ght for civil rights and free speech all over the world. While (in many countries) the contemporary quotidian landscape has indeed drastically shift ed in its access to platforms for sharing information and in the widespread ability to “publish” digitally, even with extremely limited resources, the importance of publication on physical media has not diminished. In fact, this may be the most critical time in recent history for activist groups, artists, and others to insist upon learning, establishing, and encouraging personal and community documentation practices. Hear me out.

With Th e OS’s print endeavors I wanted to open up a conversation about this: the ultimately radical, transgressive act of creating PRINT /DOCUMENTATION in the digital age. It’s a question of the archive, and of history: who gets to tell the story, and what evidence of our life, our behaviors, our experiences are we leaving behind? We can know little to nothing about the future into which we’re leaving an unprecedentedly digital document trail — but we can be assured that publications, government agencies, museums, schools, and other institutional powers that be will continue to leave BOTH a digital and print version of their production for the oﬃ cial record. Will we?

As a (rogue) anthropologist and long time academic, I can easily pull up many accounts about how lives, behaviors, experiences — how THE STORY of a time or place — was pieced together using the deep study of correspondence, notebooks, and other physical documents which are no longer the norm in many lives and practices. As we move our creative behaviors towards digital note taking, and even audio and video, what can we predict about future technology that is in any way assuring that our stories will be accurately told – or told at all? How will we leave these things for the record?

In these documents we say: WE WERE HERE, WE EXISTED, WE HAVE A DIFFERENT STORY

- Elæ [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson], Founder/Creative Director THE OPERATING SYSTEM, Brooklyn NY 2018 RECENT & FORTHCOMING OS PRINT::DOCUMENTS and PROJECTS, 2018-19

Ark Hive-Marthe Reed I Made for You a New Machine and All it Does is Hope - Richard Lucyshyn Illusory Borders-Heidi Reszies A Year of Misreading the Wildcats - Orchid Tierney We Are Never The Victims - Timothy DuWhite Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making | An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics - Amanda Galvan Huynh & Luisa A. Igloria, Editors An Absence So Great and Spontaneous It Is Evidence of Light - Anne Gorrick Th e Book of Everyday Instruction - Chloë Bass Executive Orders Vol. II - a collaboration with the Organism for Poetic Research One More Revolution - Andrea Mazzariello Th e Suitcase Tree - Filip Marinovich Chlorosis - Michael Flatt and Derrick Mund Sussuros a Mi Padre - Erick Sáenz Sharing Plastic - Blake Nemec In Corpore Sano : Creative Practice and the Challenged Body [Anthology] Abandoners - L. Ann Wheeler Jazzercise is a Language - Gabriel Ojeda-Sague Born Again - Ivy Johnson Attendance - Rocío Carlos and Rachel McLeod Kaminer Singing for Nothing - Wally Swist Th e Ways of the Monster - Jay Besemer Walking Away From Explosions in Slow Motion - Gregory Crosby Field Guide to Autobiography - Melissa Eleft herion KIN(D)* Texts and Projects

A Bony Framework for the Tangible Universe-D. Allen Opera on TV-James Brunton Hall of Waters-Berry Grass Transitional Object-Adrian Silbernagel

GLOSSARIUM: Unsilenced Texts and Translations

Śnienie / Dreaming - Marta Zelwan/Krystyna Sakowicz, (Poland, trans. Victoria Miluch) Alparegho: Pareil-À-Rien / Alparegho, Like Nothing Else - Hélène Sanguinetti (France, trans. Ann Cefola) High Tide Of The Eyes - Bijan Elahi (Farsi-English/dual-language) trans. Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian In the Drying Shed of Souls: Poetry from Cuba’s Generation Zero Katherine Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, translators/editors Street Gloss - Brent Armendinger with translations for Alejandro Méndez, Mercedes Roffé, Fabián Casas, Diana Bellessi, and Néstor Perlongher (Argentina) Operation on a Malignant Body - Sergio Loo (Mexico, trans. Will Stockton) Are There Copper Pipes in Heaven - Katrin OttarsdÓttir (Faroe Islands, trans. Matthew Landrum) Kawsay: Th e Flame of the Jungle - María Vázquez Valdez (Mexico, trans. Margaret Randall) The Book of Sounds - Mehdi Navid (Farsi dual language, trans. Tina Rahimi Return Trip / Viaje Al Regreso - Israel Dominguez; (Cuba, trans. Margaret Randall)

for our full catalog please visit: https://squareup.com/store/the-operating-system/

our deeply discounted Book of the Month and Chapbook Series subscriptions are a great way to support the OS’s projects and publications! sign up at: http://www.theoperatingsystem.org/subscribe-join/ DOC U MENT /däkyәmәnt/

First meant “instruction” or “evidence,” whether written or not.

noun - a piece of written, printed, or electronic matter that provides information or evidence or that serves as an offi cial record verb - record (something) in written, photographic, or other form synonyms - paper - deed - record - writing - act - instrument

[Middle English, precept, from Old French, from Latin documentum, example, proof, from docre, to teach; see dek- in Indo-European roots.]

Who is responsible for the manufacture of value?

Based on what supercilious ontology have we landed in a space where we vie against other creative people in vain pursuit of the fl eeting credibilities of the scarcity economy, rather than freely collaborating and sharing openly with each other in ecstatic celebration of MAKING?

While we understand and acknowledge the economic pressures and fear-mongering that threatens to dominate and crush the creative impulse, we also believe that now more than ever we have the tools to relinquish agency via cooperative means, fueled by the fi res of the Open Source Movement.

Looking out across the invisible vistas of that rhizomatic parallel country we can begin to see our community beyond constraints, in the place where intention meets resilient, proactive, collaborative organization.

Here is a document born of that belief, sown purely of imagination and will. When we document we assert. We print to make real, to reify our being there. When we do so with mindful intention to address our process, to open our work to others, to create beauty in words in space, to respect and acknowledge the strength of the page we now hold physical, a thing in our hand, we remind ourselves that, like Dorothy: we had the power all along, my dears.

the PRINT! DOCUMENT SERIES is a project of the trouble with bartleby in collaboration with the operating system