Thursday, April 25, 2019

Mark Young, from 690 words


Erasing D_scors_ sop_a la pr_ma D_ca, image by Daniel Y. Harris 



from 690 words


#1

are generally acknowledged
belonging to the.
That reliable covering

This, These place on a to.
through mandatory retirement
which means The —

is but & why
are & in
devoted to all

if valid, is
is. thought
After, with on This

. that
were I thought it was
Sali if he was

........ : is the as
has a , ability
, this is a.

in  , how in to or turn it
especially, have
for a still &?

This are going to
this process can be driven by
operators in this model.

Try


#7

Sure,

it is hat to soy
will be to the •
lay person

...outlets
doing as well

much In
this context

. But So,

at a
as a
rule

Think when
retiring of those
who die in vain

, and run


#10

& your
! if you can
in its entirety

. devoted to all
if valid,
& then I find this thing.

is The core issue
resistance
is. The framework for

I’m just divorced
Clearly, this is
a bowl somewhat

: is the
has an
, ability to

Each. In addition,
Discorsi sopra
la prima Deca


#11

, creating
also physical, social, &
or
supplemental spending —

in the function of
the outcome is
, taking up
little space until the
next time she used them.

something that
are
.
goal is
.
It is this

No more
spending time
Better,
though, than

a tabula rasa
whose entries are
mostly zeroes

, but he does so


#13 (methods of healing)

penrose
en      e
pros
enen
rosp
e
of
time house

by way of

state space
meaning.


#14

This page
is proceeding

tones & a
blooming that
feedback.

which doesn’t enunciate
or
; the “which is to say”

. at a low
price now.
over
from
current

will create threads
I have many
changes
(
The concepts of
daily
, and later by
lacks

where
are
.
synopsis

Fin.


—Mark Young


Thursday, April 18, 2019

Erik-John Fuhrer, excerpts from The Voyage Out Sonnets


Erasing V_rg_n_a, image by Daniel Y. Harris



excerpts from The Voyage Out Sonnets*


Voyage Out Sonnet 1

As a narrow arm leaps to fidget
in beauty, it is better not to be
a long blue left hand. October becoming
a tall man with cloak eyes and traffic gaze twitched
between motor cars. The safe mouth rolled
down, leaning. A feeling greater than pavement juts
out in angles of preachers dangling
wads of paper flourished with a grotesque chorus.
Patch straw fell into ears. Shoulders polished
picture postcard eyes. Bridges
of animals shoot blankly. A cab
broken by walking motor-moons jingling
a soothing reply that clothed
the skeleton beneath.


Voyage Out Sonnet 2

Dismal lovers cloak sordid
their flower company, their sodden
blue heads pressed together. Sea-gulls
sharply trotting like plate-glass,
carefully-finished. Black cloak
wounds in danger
of egg-shells steaming
with obliterated fog.
They trusted water, square and
oblong like a child. Yellow light
escorted the man and remarked
among delicate feet, indicating
mournful waterchildren approaching
dimly in the dark flag of night.


Voyage Out Sonnet 3

The purple romantic was warmer than shaking
hands. His eyes sat down as some trees shook
the collar of his coat and spoke on the weather.
General Soup held out a thumping lip and began arranging
a pause across the table. The tobacconist left a theory
about the planets loose through the light outside that slid
across a melancholy moan. An unmarried house sagely carved
apples with considerable acidity. Arches sympathize
with wastefill and acid produced
in industry. A collection of free fog sirens struck
hands, upon which they rose and left. Forgotten
stories loosen round heads. They anchor
a swarm of eternally burnt figures
visible against skirts wrapping slowly.


Voyage Out Sonnet 4

Smoked pepper cut the ghost of drowned yellow
oblivion smiling at nothing. Rooted, bleached, faded,
the mirror was twisted. An authority on traffic
and love had chosen fish, prickles, and being killed in the night.
Arms insist on a definite outline. Years reflect that intimacy
was threatened. A stick was permanent. The door burly shook
with the glow of obedience. Grown young,
still and close, squeezing the side on the sofa, brightened
brats ventured alone across the fire to show
the tricks of nonsense. Reflecting fish
speak of comfort passing and fumbling at the door. A melancholy
moment looked in laughing severely, a bored attempt to improve
the droop of the situation, now a leaping mouse sucking
a cigar. This elevated the ocean. Great white monsters laughed to no music.


Voyage Out Sonnet 5

Uncomfortable rocking wore a kind of beauty. Hooting
river eggs cast reflections of the dead. Children
dropping from a height into a pool on summer’s flushed face.
Examinations carried nonsense among shoulder blades.
Cycling every morning spoons against the insides mounted
in a heap. Heavy rainfall proved true
with ferocious energy, concentrating this moment
into a kind of walrus swinging
with a slight rocking movement of his body.
The eccentric disappeared in a pale horizon, effervescing,
leaving October salt and a sloping
cheek. The ribs of words blow upon
the shoulder, laughing. An intercepted rock-like message
you could put your fingers through.


Voyage Out Sonnet 6

Sheets sewed to the bone went to the laundry, wavered
upon a table. Threads made ladders
to the ordinary eye to sit
and hear heart complaints dreaming no more.
Miniature crusted photographs hold babies
in a frame. A hammered voice opened the door too high,
flung open the forehead of the room. Swearing summer
lay beneath the sun in cornfields. Cluttered land
murmurs, the man vanished. Aimless
ants withdrew out of sight into the bark of a tree.
Pomegranates whirled between the sentences
whistled far off in other parts of the room. Branches
forced through the window. The music
died as a child lying behind the knob on the arm.


Voyage Out Sonnet 7

Thoughts startled the obscure laughter. Nonsense
blotted out morning. Umbrellas
could only say that lips cease to move, blazing
and subsiding in the rising and falling of the droop of sleep.
Early sounds beat above the mouth cleaving
at waves washing against the vessel shouting thirsty
in rubbing hands, combing the glass
of champagne. Passages produced
personal objections. They were pleased to submit.
Ministers foretold of people buried.
They stranded dusk with the autumnal
whistler. One whipped the hour ringing the glass
fingers made uneasy by farms. The eccentric held
a voice to the table and took soup imperceptibly and with pause.


Voyage Out Sonnet 35

Laughter grating dead silence, uncrumpling
from the wall. Love was movement crowded
into words of rhythmically stripping
nonsense. Into the darkness, breath so dark it numbed.
Dreams repeated chairs scattered
in a square box vaguely twitching as if paper. Metallic
sleep lit a cigarette impatiently. Lonely
minds look at the ruins in the garden facing
sharply cut spirits. Numbness disappeared, flung off.
Silence cut down a tree, big and splendid.
People are puzzled, pointing to smoking cigarettes.
Trees flirt with eyes: nobler than conversation.
A pale look shut up in heaps of sleep.
Fragmentary, hazardous instinct.


Voyage Out Sonnet 36

People vividly grasp years, unconscious
of loneliness. Dreams in the open room
occasionally exclaim in the glass doorways.
Doubt ran casually after a flying man, roared the page with a wave.
Years flush eccentric meat with canary-coloured disapproval.
Old pictures will become beautiful tomorrow.
Dark electric water smiles pick
roses without any teeth. Fast pits
sit and smoke in the road, break
stones in shaken hands. Massacres light moths in shut night.
Sharp faces lay undertone, faded
like a figure of speech. Eyebrows intervene
as mission-smooth wishes. Orange cigarettes depart legs out, a series
of beautiful hints flushing rose.


Voyage Out Sonnet 37

A naked shade of stone smiles. A chronic end.
Breath floats too hot to climb satisfied people.
Lips made thinking ugly. Bodies
appeared squirming on the flat future.
Flimsy conversation pounces, inclined to bitter answer. Beastly
envy is awfully soothing. Blush limited interest in morality.
To escape, to hold in embroidery, a great decision: unformed,
experimental feeling. Vague colours wanting
a walk silently watch a needle.
An abyss sounded as if a dark pyramid
possessed by sewing. Smoky men gave thought without reason. Rumpled
eyes bush the patches of white flowers, full of thought.
Blue flamingo edges sunk between bells
rising, swept round the seas, across mountains, dropping.


Voyage Out Sonnet 38

Long ago, dolphins extended in the dipping of sun-dried sea. Chequered
blood turned the clouds against the roots of water.
Red remained broken with body, obeying peace.
Water ceased a pebble concentrated upon blue hollows.
Lips parted watching for swim-red hands. Arms
write grey off faces, repeat. Shifted
brains scratch shakes of air with ragged ease.
Horses visualize absurd pianos afraid of heaven.
Rabbits meditate upon life. The piano leaks
letters up to the play. Oblong photographs roused the neck of a lamb.
Purple dogs go out the eighteenth of April, walk along
the factory chimneys in a mist. Pale yellow Spring barks
through the streets. People hugged to death by light
become lost under streets where people consider silent worship.


Voyage Out Sonnet 39

Smoke-brains describe the world less splendid but more natural than atoms.
Beauty building unconscious habits called vivid eyes to laughter.
Streets describe flamingo red nonsense.
Sea eyes look to breathe. Lips mercy-mood
the breath which gazed out to sea.
Impersonal pain vanished. An elbow arranging stones
like the cry of an owl. Delight widened blue, replaced the olive trees.
Light figures piano into music in the thin white gate.
Inhuman pleasure split life. A pause
thoughtlessly vowing to silence. A curious
atmosphere. The theory of chaos crushed forth wildest
bursts of mud. Depression ran
into quick waterfalls, water-racing shaped,
perpetually pressed downwards by the wind.



—Erik-John Fuhrer


*These poems are from a longer work titled The Voyage Out Sonnets, a page by page erasure of Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out. During the process of erasure, I moved chapter by chapter and then formed what I had into 50 experimental sonnets. Solmaz Sharif has convincingly linked poetic erasure to government censorship, which every erasure project certainly risks replicating. Woolf herself had to censor herself in her novel in order to get published. Since the intent of this project is to celebrate rather than censor, I was careful and mindful not to redact but to highlight Woolf’s words. Rather than physically blackening out words during my process, I left Woolf’s original text clean and instead circled words that I believed revealed the multiple possibilities in the original text. I highlighted language over narrative and provided agency and voice to animals and inanimate objects, which Virginia Woolf often does herself in her later work, such as “Kew Gardens.” For the most part, I did not add anything to the text, with the exception of the rare addition of an "s" at the end of a word. I also occasionally cobbled together a word from individual letters. That said, Woolf's individual language remains mostly intact and unadulterated in these poems, which intend to pay homage to Woolf's original text. 


Saturday, April 13, 2019

Irene Koronas, excerpts from holyrit


holyrit, manuscript cover image by Irene Koronas




excerpts from holyrit 
(Volume IV, The Grammaton Series


1000 saints

triangle blade; z shape. handle. a mismention
stab at reconstruct: antique lover heightens
back lineament, cheek canyons, hidden linen,
an iron gate embroidered with rumors. cipher
on the latch. opaque fist spit. directions,
red letter start. slip gone down rear. wooden
blind. hammer and dirty mail. polish tat tat.
cover his hair nat. wall prayers, seal his lips.

rag tail sleeves lit open and particles hang
over, you see. perverse virgins. earring nose,
a mind kidnap. mad women. mad men decide.
over ween. could he be bound in a nutshell
or billboard con-flick. botox forehead


chapter 10

bric a brac infinity. portraits
in frontal yellow
kill frames. devotion

we lunch with delia, clio,
jasper and satin. her poodle
rim dog
hands on his ass in ¾ view


chapter 10 ½

stoop. walk. outskirt the west.
sign trapeze jumps. picture them
in a watchtower and cellphone.
hike. brandy slurs. almost
every thin in need in vain touch
a sniff launch apologia witless,
the saints march, sans reclama.
twin state. apostrophe. pretty facts
boor pockets. jackknife. slay
pedestrian green dinner plates


chapter 12

                    attic points


chapter 24

                    useless

an ocular lie on tile floor
insane pounce on keys, easy
enough to do. multum in parvo

center beam signifies 4 faces
on glass, 2 centimeters in diameter.

ferment pliny

en soph

within short glass she
stands fully dressed in sunday
eggs. her’s a vermillion wash.
the raven vault with marble
teeth. outrage as well as fog
blurs, differs hector in rain


chapter 4

dihedral angle.

vivid circuit satyrs
listen in hexameters
in sling worship they turn
water into tigers into the
yellow pages 3: each face
faces up 4: open and shut
5: or not


chapter 7

flex defense again prenatal
canal with geraniums, a tuck
and pull cheek

genesis tells
us to begin to blow. pantomime.
large unitarian accidents, cord
lineage, possess lots, goody
two shoes. no belief. no telephone
graves on the corner. after
noon perfidy

8
fixtion


chapter 9

spare rib without extraction-
adam’s apple bob

                  20 birds

ergo. she shops at least
twice a week. not once. he lay
under an olive tree sweating
bullets. he waits for the mother
of god to please her. she returns
with bag acts

                   evening

hand me that coffin. one side
of the treat. you wave goodbye.
over weight walk back. he calls
his ripe, sancho


—Irene Koronas

Monday, April 8, 2019

Daniel C. Morris, Against Declinism


ihumanitatis, image by Daniel Y. Harris  



Against Declinism


Welcome to my working week, brain ablaze postdoc:  

Specter of spectral presumed tenure
Shortness of breath group kinesthetics,
Volk Sports Management Cybersecurity Tech --

Sonny says, “Want it! You drive me like a cream dream Chevrolet…”

Post Duke Post Ironic Oughts,
Son of Jameson salaams “Neglected Blues”:

Du bist mir immer willkommen.
Das ist eine willkommene Gelegenheit. 

Signaling solidarity, Sonny slots
A dialogue box into translucent panes, awakening
Volk Tech glass corner officers.

Sonny and me become a we who study
Techweens as isolate phenomena.

We purloin “problematized populism.”
We nick institutional time, filching futures.
We despair for Distinguished Civil Engineers.
We clap because we have plenty of hands to spare.
We are underemployed, but not among the lonely only.

They, not Sonny and me, depreciate to one percent.



—Daniel C. Morris

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Alexander Dickow, The Song of Lisaine


DEUX #2, image by Rodrigue Marques de Souza




The Song of Lisaine
Traditional song of Vlinsk

The present translation by the ethnologist Ravis Nossing represents one of the only recorded texts from Vlinsk to this day, apparently in its entirety. However, the Song of Lisaine may constitute a relatively autonomous episode in a longer epic work. Summary descriptions in Nossing’s notes, recovered after his disappearance in 2173, evoke other episodes, especially concerning the illustrious twins Roven and Ravella, but whether these belong to the same narrative cycle is not known. The charming simplicity of this primitive literature has generally not attracted the interest of scholars and we reproduce it here for its value as a curiosity: rumor attributes to the people of Vlinsk the ability to reproduce otherwise than by mitosis, and this narrative seems to recount the beginnings of this repugnant practice, though it is not known whether the latter be mere ritual, or some actual means of reproduction. We caution our readers that this narrative, given the graphic nature of the content, may disturb those of delicate sensibility.

Since long ago, since
the mountain watched high over
and the forest outstretched,
since the season nearly reached
fruit and the tournaments
everywhere raged the lust
of champions, since that time
of all time it was my Season,
it was our season each one
of division: it was my Season
and for all time
I was becoming us
in the bliss
of becoming us double.

Yet on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

It was the season of division
and the celebration was in full thirst;
a turn of limbs and draperies,
a procession of throngs in laughter,
a music of tracks treading over
and of flame and flame-red troupes:
and here a dancer from whom drip
hues and chimes;
here is one who trances
in the throes of fabrics;
here is one who exults in a rush
of ripe surrender –
in the village square
rounds unravel
oblivion-lovely limbs
becoming double.

Yet on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

When over the people
declared the hero Cuillain,
between the copper of his voice
where fall and rise
the sack of Arcuin and of Dalve,
the raiding swarms each night
starred over by the drunken gods,
and the madness of Cevin
who vomited the mountain;
and the hero Cuillain spoke
and between the copper of his voice
would arise the cry
The day dulls, let us exalt,
exalt and hasten the round,
the day goes numb, and
Come, come now the time
of becoming us double.

And on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

The low red day leans
and shadow mists each shape,
the players put out their crolls(1)
and voices dim their unison;
and one lets go in haste
to embrace the earth,
another and another,
in weary knots, and the warmth
quiets further and further.
In each body the innards
furl and lengthen;
the millstones of the hips
pivot one against the other
as I remain,  
a thin kernel, a hearth
standing abandoned
amidst the celebration,
I, Lisaine, alone
before the coarse favor
of becoming double.

Yet on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

Soundless these puppets
unhinge and flutter;
a sheaf of cramps
creases the hooked limbs,
spines arch and split:
between flesh
and soul reach legions
of sinews which align
along a spindle(2)
as I remain,
a thin kernel, a hearth
standing abandoned amidst
the anguish of those
who will become double.

Yet on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

Heart, sway me
when this just convulsion
from me now turns aside;
flow not as sorrow,
but, furor or revolt,
deliver me from this
divide through which the nation
deprives me of its bond;
I have been the axis of this people;
now, kinless, I do not number
among them, I, Lisaine, standing
and abandoned, alone
ousted from the celebration
of your becoming double.

Yet on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

Just as rebellions
will rise up a city of faces
ravaged or enraged,
multiple I struggled;
to take action
drove and beset me
aimless; then a sudden reason
left me devoid
or else a bitterness poured me
senseless toward the celebration;
and like Pratellan seizing
the vastness of Kholis
into his throttled grip;
like the vulture Golin
ripping boughs
from the world-tree,
ablaze with weeping
upon Cuillain I leapt.

And on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

In this contest did I hope
he would split open
to disappear me there,
did I desire his death, a standstill;
to melt into or dismember him,
to lose myself in the guts of him;
did I think to take part?
Yet I unleashed myself whole
and all my famine;
I fought by tremor
and by torment,
I feigned fists, I needed,
lashed out, strove, I fled myself  
toward his body coiled far
against me, and among us
moved a terror higher by degrees,
and a consecration.

And on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

I confined you, companion,
in my arms’ own lunacy
enfolded you in furrows
of the violence I had become:
in fright, my prince, I retreated you
by force inside the commissure
of my quivering body
when all at once a velvet-slicked
brand burned between me
like a scabbard punctured through:
and our sorrow rocking
bit by bit became truce
and solace, -- and to you I murmured,
I was long with sighs,
and you flickered, you shook,
my love, like a refrain.

And on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.

This pure day and cruel
was the season of union,
it was my season, when two
became one, springing forth
twins of renown:
Roven of sudden hand,
quick-hearted Ravella,
the one like the other
in need of new paths through
words, our speech was cleft
for all time in two:
she [crd] for the one
who struck ruin to the heart
of the tyrant Martisca,
he(3) [crdü] for the one
who plundered the blinking spores
of the monster Terluin,
and these were the names they bore.

And on this day, when two
became one,
I forever split
our speech in two.


—Alexander Dickow


End Notes

1. Curved musical instrument with three strings, played with a short bow; this instrument is typical of the furthest reaches of Vlinsk.

2. The author is no doubt describing the prometaphase, the second phase of mitosis in which the body is organized into bundles of filaments called kinetochore microtubules, essential to the duplication of the individual.

3. The language of Vlinsk makes a distinction between the pronouns crd and crdü, and this distinction has repercussions on the entire morphology of the language: thus, nouns belong to two morphological classes corresponding to the use of these two pronouns. This complex system, thoroughly explained in my Treatise on the Language of Vlinsk, has no equivalent in Auredian; I therefore had to content myself with inserting the Vlinskian pronouns between brackets. This aetiological myth concerning this language’s system of genders, as I baptised it in my treatise, seems to me unique among all the cultures of the world. (R. Nossing’s Note.)