FCF 13

Now
something moves
from the left

of
that rectangularity,
a big smudge,

a
purplish cloud;
its direction seems

to
be the
right. And right

in
the middle
of its journey,

it
drops something,
a curve-like

entity,
the left
half of a

parenthesis
(sharp objects
and toxic substances,

floods
and holy
wars all come

and
go with
the regularity of

leaves
on a
tree             that network of roots            tousling

                   thinning            to silky nebulae

The
image created
by “silky nebulae”

is
a web,
obviously: if we

squeeze
the book’s
two pleasure points,

“So
That Even”
reads one title,

“A
Lover Exists,”
the other, in

a
metalogical mirror,
a poufed-out plastic bag blows by,
           ‘Pathmark’ is what it says.
                     This is an ambiguous answer,
                     whatever the question.

Ah,
Heidegger! On
a starry night,

with
so many
fat tickets, or

“Unspeakable”:
Serious stuff,
I’m like / Whatever.

And similarly, Picabia’s formerly ‘poetic’ verbal inscriptions become less a series of lines of flight than an assault and a graffiti once more, the open-ended ‘M…..’ calling up inevitably the Dadaists’ favorite exclamation: Merde. Shit for whomever looks at this! Or better: Fuck anyone who looks at this.

The
r is
missing. But the

processes
were not
utterly dissimilar, those

of
loss and
gain. So I

began
to record
what I saw.

I
turned toward
a room packed

with
babies, and
we were gone,

out
the front
door of a

cold
former palace.
In the car

I
wept. What’s
the matter? Ramesh

asked
Bryant. By
the waters of.

In
the dream
it’s you and

me
and a
lot of other

people.
We’re performing
a long and

complicated
vocal piece
and I love

you
in the
dream. I think

it
lasts about …
twenty minutes, then

they
have to
use the hack

saws.
Both eyes
of the sky

have
cleared, out
back is a

pastiche
of oil
rigs, algae, a

dog,
a fish,
furniture, a plant,

and
a little robot
drawn on a

cut-
out index.
A hammerhead shark,

a
hand-drawn
eye, another little

text robot. Permutations of data and the robotics of human interactions in an anonymous global populace resonate with the Althusserian notion of interpellation, where subjects internalize hegemonic values through the commerce of art and technology. It would be nice, she said, if you would take this patch of blue and make something of it, as he had said it was time to make something of yourself, making something, scratches and doodles, people will look at it, they will have an appetite for such things, they will develop a taste for quiche, for albatross, for moldy bread.

They
will go
by threes. They

will
march in
the streets protesting.

I
tried counting
a couple of

times
and never
came up with

the
same total.
I’m not much

of
a counter.
It doesn’t feel

counter-
intuitive to
attempt such measures

here
though. 180
feels right. A

half-
circle or
possibility of reversal

in
brackets? Vortices?
the streets protesting.

“faint
light” that
“approaches the surf.”

Such
a mode
of interior architecture

is
“sacramental” only
because some “cadre”

of
management gurus
have perceived the

arrangement
as a key
to fulfilling the

“sacred”
task between
: spaced selves // finessive.

The
noise isn’t
necessarily deafening, but

the
cacophony can
be annoying, especially

if
we feel
“amphibious slime” around

our
ankles, as
we wade through

a
“glassy pond”.
“Where will you

turn
up next?
Always, there’s something”

“in
a state
of / suspended / interpretation”

media-
saturated environment
“left to burn”,

[Note: Sources: the first 15 reviews, etc in Galatea Resurrects #11. Like a slightly supersized sonnet, right? The next 15 will be used in FCF 14, and so on, til I’ve sampled the whole issue. Dedicated, as are 14 and the “and so on”, to Eileen Tabios.

Michael Caylo-Baradi, “Abbreviations in Lucidity: Luminous appropriations in Jukka-Pekka Kervinen and Márton Koppány’s Short Movies”; Rachel Daley, “Pink Acid Cloud and Digital Love: The Slipstream Worlds of Stephanie Strickland’s Zone : Zero”; Joel Chace, as quoted in John Olson’s review of Chace’s Scaffold, and Olson himself; Eric Gelsinger, review of Tawrin Baker, So That Even; Rachel Blau DuPlessis, as quoted in Kristina Marie Darling, ““Suggest Another Mechanism Of Order”: Rachel Blau Duplessis, Torques, and the Uncertainties of Artistic Practice”; Mark DuCharme, as quoted in Denise Dooley’s review of DuCharme’s The Sensory Cabinet; George Baker, Caught By The Tail: Francis Picabia and Dada in Paris, as quoted in John Cunningham’s review of Baker and I Am A Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose and Provocations by Francis Picabia, (tr. Marc Lowenthal); Susan M Schultz, as quoted by Eileen Tabios in her review of Schultz’s Dementia Blog; Kate Greenstreet, as quoted in Pamela Hart’s review of Greenstreet’s This is Why I Hurt You; Jane Augustine, as quoted in Jon Curley’s review of Augustine’s A Woman’s Guide to Mountain Climbing; Sueyeun Juliette Lee, as quoted in Karen An-Hwei Lee’s review of Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Mental Commitment Robots (collages by Brenda Iijima), and Sueyeun Juliette Lee herself; Beverly Dahlen, A Reading 3 (not in GR); Tom Beckett, review of Brenda Iijima, Subsistence Equipment; Alfred Yuson, as quoted in Lisa Bower’s review of Trading in Mermaids, and Bower herself; Sheila E Murphy, as quoted in Thomas Fink’s review of Murphy’s Parsings, and Fink himself; Ann Lauinger, in Michael Caylo-Baradim’s review of Lauinger’s Persuasions of Fall, and Caylo-Baradim himself]

Comments

[Bob]

Ah,
Heidegger! On
a starry night,

with
so many
fat tickets, or

“Unspeakable”:
Serious stuff,
I’m like / Whatever.