This being the case — and as we are, ourselves, infused with chance — if we see faces everywhere, how can we not give credence to the impulse to see voices in every letter? Letters that meander, more or less together, and reappear in the brevity of an outline that quickly dissolves into noise. As if by chance. It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. And then there is the function of the bicycle:
Under the skin the body is an over-heated factory,
and outside,
the invalid shines,
glows,
from every burst pore,
the Magician is pointing toward Jupiter with one hand while the other points to Earth. The Magician has access to all four Earth elements with the ability to draw down a fifth, and sometimes a sixth element from the planet he is pointing towards. Cover their faces with equal amounts of the following dried ingredients: Fennel seeds, pine needles, rose petals, mugwort, basil, white sage, red sandalwood powder, perique tobacco, and marijuana. These ingredients qualm negative thoughts, shift gears for transformation, and also invoke prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, happiness, honesty, peace of mind,
like most people
ghosts want
listeners,
there are
trains circling below the icy waters,
a guy who looks just like
Picasso wears a hat with roses,
he has shoes aglow with little lights,
Picasso & Rosa Luxemburg converse,
when the earth shakes bulbs drop from the chandeliers,
in the cold air fingers burn & stretch,
steps with blue messages are everywhere,
blue tambourine blue nails blue poppy seeds blue powdered hair,
as Walt Whitman might have put it,
what is in me is in you, too.
So I worked with scientists to develop some imaginary polymers (with real properties) that might plausibly lie at the heart of some culturally influential texts. My goal was to see if I could read the writing of chemicals in my own body. What else was inside me? I started to think about sequencing my microbiome as part of making a larger inventory. I took seriously the proposition that chemicals and microbes constitute forms of metabolic writing. Hormones are sequential sentences in cascading anatomical stories. Consequently, the prose poem became the dominant form in the book. I also liked how the prose poem, as a low-key, ostensibly innocuous, or “formless” form, suggests the subtle ways in which many of the chemicals I tested myself for affect the body: endocrine disruptors, or hormone mimics, intervene in metabolic processes precisely because of their inconspicuousness. To contrast with the prose poems, I also employed lineation in a number of sections, eee gee
My sweat
My sweat.
So I tested my blood and urine for the following chemicals:
- Phthalates,
- PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls),
- PFCs (perfluorinated chemicals),
- OCPs (organochlorine pesticides),
- OPIMs (organophosphate insecticide metabolites),
- PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons),
- HBCDs/PBDEs (flame retardants),
- Triclosan (antibacterial additive),
- Parabens,
- BPA (bisphenol A),
- and 31 heavy metals.
The book includes graphs and charts displaying chemical concentrations in my blood and urine, along with a diagram of my most common metabolic pathways, and an unrooted phylogenetic tree depicting the relationship between bacterial species found in my gut. There are microscope images of my blood, urine, sweat, and hair (the excretory pathways some of these chemicals take from my body) as well as photographs of the experimental processes I undertook. I also decided to include a series of “specimen reports” that reflect on some of my experiences performing the tests and acquiring the results. While I did experience wonder at the complex agency of these substances and organisms in my body, I wasn’t prepared for the mental health effects of discovering flame retardants, heavy metals, internationally banned chemicals, and microbes associated with inflammation and illness. But I couldn’t get past the way his narrative ended, a man on a bike pulling his leashed dog into the path of a London bus. We are a kind country, a good country. “I don’t want to know what Trump tweeted,” a friend writes. She gets sick otherwise. The concentration camp sits at the edge of the skull, blurred out image that pulses like a torn back toe-nail. One end of the mind is outrage, the other still sees morning clouds on the mountain, hears the shama thrush trilling, the saw booming from the shed out back, no wonder
doctor i no can stop shitting
you me give drug for stop shitting, no wonder
doctor i no can stop saying ouch ouch
you me give drug for stop saying ouch ouch, no wonder
doctor i no can stop talk in head
when want go sleep
you me give drug for stop talk in head
and go sleep
i keep hearing Eric Garner gasp as he was being murdered,
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
i can’t breathe
It’s been four years and 364 days since his murder, by the way. Which is to say, with Sean Bonney,
for “I love you” say fuck the police / for
“the fires of heaven” say fuck the police, don’t say
“recruitment” don’t say “trotsky” say fuck the police
for “alarm clock” say fuck the police
for “my morning commute” for
“electoral system” for “endless solar wind” say fuck the police
don’t say “I have lost understanding of my visions” don’t say
“that much maligned human faculty” don’t say
“suicided by society” say fuck the police / for “the movement
of the heavenly spheres” say fuck the police / for
“the moon’s bright globe” for “the fairy mab” say
fuck the police / don’t say “direct debit” don’t say “join the party”
say “you are sleeping for the boss” and then say fuck the police
don’t say “evening rush-hour” say fuck the police / don’t say
“here are the steps I’ve taken to find work” say fuck the police
don’t say “tall skinny latté” say fuck the police / for
“the earth’s gravitational pull” say fuck the police / for
“make it new” say fuck the police
all other words are buried there
all other words are spoken there / don’t say “spare change”
say fuck the police / don’t say “happy new year” say fuck the police
perhaps say “rewrite the calendar” but after that, immediately
after that say fuck the police / for “philosopher’s stone” for
“royal wedding” for “the work of transmutation” for “love
of beauty” say fuck the police / don’t say “here is my new poem”
say fuck the police
say no justice no peace and then say fuck the police
Which is to say, “Why do you assume that your toothache corresponds to the fact / that you hold your cheek.” “There most certainly exist entirely determined actions, / ideas about / another person sensing pain.”
Well, of course red exists,
and you are bound to see it,
an increase in pressure on my eyes
produces red images.
It’s unclear whether I really have artistic ambitions. It wouldn’t be a bad thing, of course, why not and who cares, my art is becoming a space for large-scale installations, as a rule, with an eye to a certain socio-political topicality. And so it’s time to be marginal
i’m sure, yes, marginal
Which is to say that if an animal has previously suffered escapable shock, and then she suffers inescapable shock, she will be happier than if she has previously not suffered escapable shock — for if she hasn’t, she will only know about being shocked inescapably. But if she has been inescapably shocked before, and she is put in the conditions where she was inescapably shocked before, she will behave as if being shocked, mostly. Her misery doesn’t require acts. Her misery requires conditions. If an animal is inescapably shocked once, and then the second time she is dragged across the electrified grid to some non-shocking space, she will be happier than if she isn’t dragged across the electrified grid. The next time she is shocked, she will be happier because she will know there is a place that isn’t an electrified grid. She will be happier because rather than just being dragged onto an electrified grid by a human who then hurts her, the human can then drag her off of it. If an animal is shocked, escapably or inescapably, she will manifest deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her. If she has manifested deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her, she will manifest deeper reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her and then dragged her off the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for electrified grids. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. If an animal is shocked, their children lie
strapped to their beds with leather.
Clamps & screws are applied
to straighten their crooked limbs.
Chin-straps, head-braces, leg-splints
to teach them to sit up straight.
Steel corsets for their bent backs
& caved-in chests.
On metal crutches, they slip & fall
on fresh-scoured floors of stone.
Rubber hoses protrude from nostrils & ears.
Everything reeks of soap.
Strength is obedience.
Joy is submission.
Firmness is goodness.
They pee in their beds every night,
they get twenty strokes of the cane every morning,
they pee in their beds every night.
At long marble tables, their faces tum, white
towards Frau Schultz who brings them a pail of potato soup.
From the oleograph on the wall,
King Ludwig’s sensitive features
look down upon them.
No wonder, then, as Bataille notes in The Accursed Share: above all they [and by they he means we] have acquired the strange faculty of sobbing and bursting into laughter. The notice or notation or excess of notation that marks the material irruption of our presence to ourselves is, in these cases, given in/as sound: a scar, a rivet, or the mark of a rivet or being riveted which is the mark, in its turn, of something Lacan would call an irreducible “dehiscence at the very heart of the organism,” an interinanimation of bridge and chasm. Think here of the character Obeuse, visually represented by a shaded circle. Each page of the collection contains a cryptic scene involving Obeuse. Then “MiLLiONS OF OBEUSES THEMSELVES DiSAPPEARED,” and the single shaded circle that we begin with turns at last into a line — so the researchers used a special smart macrofiber material to create a slider-crank mechanism — which was attached to the knee due to the knee joint’s large range of motion. Due to the continuous back-and-forth the material encounters when the wearer walks, every time the knee flexes, the device bends and generates 1.6 microwatts. And now,
Everybody is hiccupping in secret.
An unusually intense something-or-other hic-hics in the throat.
I have heard of throat surgery.
Some throats have been slashed.
Others have been treated to solid bamboo ...
They might come up with a long list of names one day.
We are the earth, the moony earth. The War went on for a long time. I might as well be a byproduct of other people’s conversation. What to fix? How to fix? That’s not a fishing boat, it’s a giraffe. Only two out of ten construction workers die in Abu Dhabi, the rest simply fail to have their visas renewed; they are bagged, tagged and placed on the next available flight back to wherever they came from. My father explains that an official from the Municipality inspected the building last week and ordered all the partitions torn down in accordance with new planning regulations. The sun reaches its peak and a kitten climbs to the top of a small dune in the half-empty parking lot and spends an hour trying to shit, but can’t. Really, there is so much pleasure in this book. I was in such a warm buzzy space reading it, especially after watching a seagull stand on top of another seagull. But there were military jets flying back and forth over the coast from Eglin Air Force Base, one of the largest bombing and training ranges in the US. The jets were the same color as the pelicans. The “shoes” in it are our relationship. O Sappho! She is not olive, but more like a dream-coal. Light up. Light up. It’s light out the window, 2am. “Like 50 familiar postures in the dark ... Run here. We will save your life” — “But now more corridor and hallway have walked into our lives. Now the whistling is less playful and the barbed wire is overcrowded too” — “All friendships have dead people in them” — it seems crazy, right? That ppl wd elect a hamster president, that there are happy bears with chainsaws in the forest, those animatronics things can break! So begins I forget which one of the Duino Elegies. That openness is a space inhabited by elves or something. Glory to the creative breath, glory to the travelling stars. Oh, pure tension! But if I cry out, who in the orders of the angels will listen to me? Blessed are you born of Orpheus, the severe judge. I mean, Warren Kanders didn’t earn his place as vice chair of the board at the Whitney Museum of American Art through his good taste, people. He has used some of his estimated $700 million to make tax-deductible donations to support exhibitions there. What successful enterprise has made this generosity aka artwashing possible? Thanks to the collective, years-long effort of activists, students, and reporters to bring everyday brutality to light, we could tell you quite a lot about Kanders’s company Safariland, which does a brisk trade supplying batons, handcuffs, holsters, and body armor to police and security forces including the IDF and the NYPD. But let’s talk about the tear gas. Supposedly nonlethal, it can kill and has killed people, like Layla al-Ghandour, an eight-month-old baby who died last year in Gaza after tear gas inhalation; Osman Abubakir, a sixty-two-year-old man who choked to death in February of this year in Khartoum, Sudan; and the thirty-seven people in the back of a police van in Cairo in 2013. After it was trialed on the battlefields of World War I, tear gas was outlawed for military use in 1925. That same year, Federal Laboratories, a company now owned by Safariland, manufactured the first tear gas police batons for use against civilians. “The use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world,” proclaims the 1925 Geneva Protocol. But tear gas remains legal to use in peacetime, by governments on their own citizens. Which says something about governments, doesn’t it? Remember that NY Times photo from last November of a woman at the border wall in Tijuana gripping the arms of two little girls in diapers as all three flee a plume of tear gas streaking from a launched canister? US Customs and Border Protection — whose goons are currently overseeing concentration camps across the country — purchased that tear gas from Safariland. Kanders’s thriving company also made the news a few years ago: it supplied tear gas and other counterinsurgency equipment to the uniformed assholes tasked with suppressing the collective response to the murders of Freddie Gray and Mike Brown, its tear gas was launched at water protectors at Standing Rock, after which the company was sued by a protester because a canister mutilated her left arm. Safariland also made the tear gas used to disperse and defeat a 2018 May Day anti-austerity protest in Puerto Rico. We know this because many people — reporters, activists, inhabitants of Palestine and Ferguson picking up empty tear gas canisters looking for a corporate logo — wanted us to know, and made it possible for us to know. After a Hyperallergic article revealed Kanders’s connection to the teargassing at the border, there was an open letter from the Whitney’s staff (signed by just one of the Biennial’s two curators) demanding, among other things, that leadership “consider asking for Warren Kanders’ resignation.” Whitney director Adam Weinberg replied with a plea for civility and kindness, whatever those terms means in this context besides hush hush he’s got money, people. Kanders himself insists that his products are nonlethal, that he doesn’t throw the grenades himself, that riots are dangerous and bad anyway, and that he knows all this because he spends a lot of time with five-oh. Dude. A letter demanding Kanders’s removal was signed by over 120 critics, scholars, and theorists, and was then sent to artists. Of the participants in the Biennial, the majority of whose works have some quote unquote political valence, only about two-thirds signed. Some of the artists who didn’t sign were nevertheless outraged when their quote unquote radicality was thrown into question. But that’s ok. Plastic straws are great again. Brad Parscale, the president’s re-election campaign manager, tweeted out a link Thursday to buy Trump-branded straws from the Trump campaign store. Why? Because “liberal paper straws don’t work.” The pack of 10 sells for $15, coming out to a cost of $1.50 a straw. And these aren’t just any plastic straws; these are “laser engraved.” By Friday afternoon, they were sold out. In less sanctimonious cultures, children are taught methods to deworm themselves early. Spoonfuls of castor oil or papaya seeds are a weekly protocol. So are herbs like neem or fennel after meals. All these are lethal to parasites. In other words, in the days of hot Cheetos, long dance rehearsals, and very little water consumption but lots of Capri Sun, the scent of cloves stands out. Cloves contain a volatile oil called eugenol that dissolves the casing around parasite eggs so that the herbs that kill them can do their job. Black Walnut Hull is the third herb in the triumvirate of most parasite cleansing concoctions. Though cloves kill the eggs and the wormwood kills the living parasites in the body, Black Walnut Hull hauls both the eggs and the dead worms out of the body through the bowel. That’s the kind of love this was/is, the kind that externalizes what’s dormant inside, puts it where it must be witnessed and can no longer be denied. In other words, even robots can write poems, like
you
are
inscribed
in the
lines on the
ceiling
you
are
inscribed in
the depths
of
the
storm
because you are a sweet-smelling diamond architecture
an empty shell
clothes cast off
autumn evening
youre right.
“all right.
you’re right.
okay, fine.
“okay, fine.
yes, right here.
no, not right now.
“no, not right now.
“talk to me right now.
please talk to me right now.
i’ll talk to you right now.
“i’ll talk to you right now.
“you need to talk to me now.
today i feel different than a lettuce
now i feel not unlike a sufferable heater during a sustenance
now, i feel like an unmeet topography
like an all-time causeway because of a sickness
so i feel not unlike a travelling broiler
like a jackal
today i’m feeling close to an audacity
also i’m feeling close to a nulled tomorrow
not unlike a pistachio
now and again, a cloven-hoofed chimera beneath a juicer
because of a rotor
kind of like a commode
like a coyote before a terminus
like a philosopher
now i feel kind of like a lousiest foundation without a pre-emption
so i feel like a thalamic empiricism across a fecundity
i’m feeling like a multidecade groove on a neophyte
at the moment like a nondenominational vanity
now, i’m feeling like an ocher malediction because of a nebula
now and again, i feel not unlike a presence
now, i feel like a bad-mannered iteration against a quintet
um, a flat-rate tarantula
today i feel different than a marriage splat
now i’m feeling like a magnet
but i feel not unlike a supplication
also i’m feeling close to a squashing destination instead of a pigtail
like a two-dimensional calling without a collation
now, i’m feeling like a gambit
but a tucked vacation
so i feel kind of like a nonthreatening exhaustion during a reverie
a repent calculus across a cranberry
also, i’m feeling like a painterly dashboard at a flora
so i’m feeling like a glisten
well, i feel kind of like an oceanographic plausibility
now i’m feeling like a braid aperture
so, a grooved requirement
well, like a clothbound bison with a pelvis
close to a caravan
um, like a polarity
now and again, i feel like a thronged fastness during a half-life
i mean, not unlike a swift-footed compulsion instead of an endowment
so a darkness
kind of like a palette
like a hippocampus
like a plating
a songful perspicacity
also i feel not unlike an equinoctial snapshot
like a nearsighted tenderness
i think i feel kind of like a seizure
at the moment a darkness
so, i feel different than a birdfeeder
a bull’s-eye
now and again, i feel like a fast-flying hypnosis
above a movie
now i’m feeling close to a regression
inside an inclemency
i feel different than a half-moon
at the moment, i’m feeling like a granite
at the moment i feel kind of like a lanky infiltration
like a medallion without a vulture
now, i feel like phlegm
like a canted casting across a nimbus
like a longed-for detritus during a serum
now i feel not unlike a localized untruth
now i feel not unlike a worthless transformer
um, an eggplant
like a haptic variety
today a veiled absence with a forwardness
now a creature
now i’m feeling like an extrasensory suite
today a dialectal pruning under a sabre
well, i feel not unlike a colon
so i feel kind of like a chiefest concertina
like an industrialized conductivity
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“Any style of life
is prim
The faery is rosy
of glow”
Structurally, the letters in the first poem correspond to those in the second — it’s a monoalphabetic substitution cipher. That means “L” is encoded as “R,” “I” is encoded as “O,” and so on. Each of the cipher’s letter pairings representing a DNA codon and an amino acid. For example, in the cipher, “N” equals “H” and a codon (eye eee ATG), while “H” equals “N” and an amino acid. With the first poem enciphered in Gs, As, Ts and Cs, it’s then inserted into the genome of bacteria that can outlive humans. But this isn't just a random message. Instead, it sets in motion two things: The bacteria glow red, and they produce protein. And when deciphered, the protein's amino acid string reads as the second line of the poem. Oh, and the reason for it glowing red? It's a “self-reflective fulfillment,” a reference to the poem it’s writing, and its faery’s “rosy glow.” The lifeform involved here is Deinococcus radiodurans. It was first described in the ‘50s, when it survived what was then thought to be a life-obliterating dose of radiation. Although that's its most famous quality -— its species name is Latin for “radiation surviving”; its genus translates as “terrible berry” — D. radiodurans has many skills. It’s fine taking an acid bath, for one. It’s also adept at dealing with dehydration, extreme cold, and it can survive in a vacuum. In ideal conditions, it’s biologically immortal. But D. radiodurans’ ability to look after itself, to repair its DNA, has proved a problem. Bök has run two experiments, both of which have failed,
light grey whiteness of fog against invisible ridge
towhee standing on grape stake fence across from it
expressed in translation events as long as we think
[Note: Sources: Román Antopolsky, Haunted House; Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, and Antonin Artaud, quoted in D&G’s Anti-Oedipus (trs. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane); CA Conrad, “THE MAGICIAN TAROT CARD: We Must Understand Our Creativity Is An Organ, A Vital One”, at (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals, 12 Jul 019, and “(Soma)tic Poetry Ritual & Resulting Poem: You Don’t Have What It Takes to Be My Nemesis”, at Diode, vol.7 no.1; JBR; Jerome Rothenberg, “Autobiography 1977 The First One Hundred”, at BLACKOUT ((poetry & politics)), 15 Jul 019; JBR; Adam Dickinson, “Too much information”, at Jacket2, 12 Jul 019; JBR; Susan M Schultz, “Yellow cards”, at Tinfish Editor’s Blog, 15 Jul 019; JBR; Ernst Jandl, “consultation” (tr. Anselm Hollo), in Jandl’s Reft and Light; JBR; Eric Garner; JBR; Sean Bonney, “ACAB: A Nursery Rhyme”, at Abandoned Buildings, 31 Dec 014 (a 21st-century masterpiece); JBR; Pavel Arsenev, various, in “Pavel Arsenev: Poetry and Prose: Translated by the Cement Collective”, at Arcade, n.d.; JBR; Anne Boyer, “The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock”, at Arcade, n.d.; JBR; Gunnar Harding, Starnberger See (tr. Anselm Hollo), in in Spirit v.4 nos.2-3, Spring-Summer 1979; JBR; Georges Bataille, and Fred Moten, quoted in Michael Cross, “Surplus Pt. 6”, at Jacket2, 17 Jul 019; JBR; Kelly Liu, and Paul Colinet, Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse, quoted in Liu’s “Transfigurations/abstractions”, at Jacket2, 16 Jul 019; JBR; “Harvesting energy from the human knee”, at Science Daily, 17 Jul 019 (see Fei Gao, Gaoyu Liu, Brendon Lik-Hang Chung, Hugo Hung-Tin Chan, Wei-Hsin Liao. “Macro fiber composite-based energy harvester for human knee.” Applied Physics Letters, 2019; 115 (3): 033901 DOI: 10.1063/1.5098962); JBR; Zeyar Lynn, “Each stands up & introduces herself”, “Sabulous blank”, (tr. ko ko thett), at Granta 138; Ian McMillan, That’s Not a Fishing Boat, It’s a Giraffe: Responses to Austerity, seen in “John’s Favourite Poetry Pamphlets of 2019 so far”, at London Review Bookshop, Jul 019; André Naffis-Sahely, “Vanishing Act”, “The Return”, Infidelity”, at Five Dials; Nick Sturm, “Utopia: Review”, at Tender Buttons Press, 13 Sept 018 (on Bernadette Mayer, Utopia) ; Anne Waldman, “Not a Male Pseudonym: Author’s Note”, at Tender Buttons Press, 11 Sept 018; Tongo Eisen-Martin, Heaven Is All Goodbyes, quoted in Anthony Reed, “The Bourgeois and the Boulevard”, at Commune 3; Gary Sullivan, “That a Hamster Could Be President”, in Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf; JBR; Jordan Davis, “Disney Vengeance”, in Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf; blurb for Bill Henson, Principio Erat (with signed print) A, at Photobookstore; JBR; Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett, “The Tear Gas Biennial”, at Artforum, 17 Jul 019 (Michael Rakowitz was the first artist to drop out. To their credit, Black Finlayson and Haslett had informed the Whitney of their non-participation before publishing this. Now Eddie Arroyo, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Meriem Bennani, Nicole Eisenman, and Nicholas Galanin have also dropped out); JBR; Nicholas Wu, “‘Liberal paper straws don’t work’: Trump campaign starts selling plastic drinking straws”, at USA Today, 19 Jul 019 (hat tip K); Harmony Holiday, “An Artist’s Guide to Herbs: Cloves”, at BOMB, 19 Jul 019; JBR; poems included in Yisela Alvarez Trentini, “Computer Generated Poetry Will Knock Your Socks Off”, at Medium, 21 Mar 017, and a long series of (modified) computer-generated tweets from feelings.js; Christian Bök, and Aaron Souppouris, quoted in Souppouris’s “The prose at the end of the universe”, at Engadget, 30 Dec 015 (re Bök’s Xenotext); Stephen Ratcliffe, “7.21”, at Temporality, 21 Jul 019]